Egypt's Senate, the consultative upper house of parliament, will convene on Sunday and Monday to discuss a report prepared by its Financial and Economic Committee on the state's socio-economic development plan for 2021/2022. Egyptian Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala al-Saeed is expected to answer questions and give comments during the debate. During a meeting with the Senate's Financial and Economic Affairs Committee that took place two weeks ago, Al-Saeed said during a meeting with the Senate's committee two weeks ago that the the new development plan targets 1.3 trillion Egyptian pounds ($83 billion) in overall investments, of which 358 billion pounds is to be spent on 12,000 projects across the country. The report is highlighting that most of the investment projects in the government's 2021/2022 development plan would focus on both the education and healthcare sectors. "The new socio-economic development plan's investments in the health sector alone will reach 47.5 billion pounds in 2021-22 in order to help the state and medical institutions contain the COVID-19 crisis," the report read. The report also shows that the volume of investment earmarked for the education sector in the new development plan is estimated at 56 billion pounds. "These investments will focus on building more schools, raising the quality of education and improving teaching methods," the report added. It added that "the investments in the health and education sectors also aim to establish universities in most governorates as well as mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on socio-economic conditions of poor citizens." The Egyptian minister also said that the new development plan aims to raise the economic growth rate to 5.4 percent in 2021/2022, up from the 2.6 percent in the current financial year. "The COVID-19 crisis had led economic growth in Egypt to drop from 3.6 percent in 2019/2020 to 2.8 percent in 2020/2021, but we hope that we will be able to bounce back to the pre-COVID-19 level of 2018/2019, achieving an economic growth rate of 5.4 per cent in fiscal year 2021/2022," al-Saeed added.
