Investments by Egypt's industrial sector surged 22 percent in the 2018/2019 fiscal year to record 99.5 billion Egyptian pounds, Egypt's Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Saeed said. The figure stood at 81 billion pounds in the previous 2017/2018 fiscal year, she added. The minister said investments in petroleum industries saw an increase of 95 percent during FY2018/2019, and the ministry targets increasing manufacturing investments. Manufacturing contribution in gross domestic product by the end of FY 2018/2019, which ended in June, amounted to 846 billion pounds, up 17.9 percent from a year earlier, according to El-Saeed. The Egyptian government is targeting a 6 percent economic growth rate next year, pushed by the industrial sector. El-Saeed also said that petroleum, tourism, construction, real estate, agriculture, transport, logistics, and Suez Canal were among key drivers of growth in the past fiscal year. Reviewing macroeconomic indices, El-Saeed said that economic growth rose by 5.6 percent during the second quarter of FY2019/2020, up from 5.4 percent in the same quarter of FY2018/2019, adding that the economic growth increase is stable. She added that the government is focusing on having value added sectors be the main source of increasing economic growth, saying that the key source of the attained economic growth from 2014 until 2016 was through the consumption sector, accounting for 70 percent, which is unacceptable.
