House of Representatives Budget Committee Member Silvia Nabil said that six ministries will be evaluated by a performance and program budget review committee during the current fiscal year. The government had initially considered a total of seven ministries to be reviewed. According to Nabil, the six ministries include the transport, communications, housing, new urban communities, telecommunications, information technology, social solidarity, education, higher education, and scientific research portfolios. "The Ministry of Health (MOH) has not committed to providing its private data and sending it to the committee to undergo the review in the current fiscal year 2017/2018,'' said Nabil. A MOH official said that the ministry's commitment to high performance and budgetary responsibility during the current fiscal year would require substantial financial resources, outweighing current financial allocations in the current fiscal year budget. Health allocations in the current fiscal year budget stood at EGP 53bn, up from EGP 48bn in the previous fiscal year. According to Nabil, the six ministries that will be subject to the review coincided with the unified performance model prepared by the Ministries of Finance and Planning. She said that the review committee will begin to look at nine new ministries to balance budgets and performance during the next fiscal year in the framework of transparency and accountability, and control of financial allocations received by various executive bodies in the country. An official at the Ministry of Finance has said in previous press statements to Daily News Egypt that international financial institutions will assist Egypt with technical support to implement the review of program budgets and performance of the various ministries. Egypt signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) worth $12bn, which will be obtained over a period of three years. The first $4bn has already been received. An IMF mission visited Egypt in the past two weeks to follow up on economic measures implemented by the Egyptian government in order to provide the next portion of the loan. Talat Khalil, a member of the House of Representatives, said that the submission of ministries to the oversight committee facilitates a process of monitoring the performance of ministers and officials, according to a timetable and can follow-up on projects under implementation, which have not been completed yet. The Egyptian government hopes to achieve a growth rate at the end of the current fiscal year approaching 5%, under the reforms implemented through the issuance of the unified investment law, value added tax (VAT), and industrial licenses.
