Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait reviewed a report on the performance of the electronic payment and collection system for government dues over 34 months since May 2019, on Saturday, stressing that this advanced system is one of the most important tools in the efforts to digitise Egypt. This is being done by shifting to a non-cash economy and enhancing financial inclusion in a way that contributes to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government performance, improving the quality of services provided to citizens, and enhancing governance and transparency. The minister asserted that the system of electronic payment and collection of government dues performed remarkably well, as the value of government electronic payments collected through this advanced system during the past 34 months amounted to about EGP 3.7 trillion, while the value of the sovereign receipts from taxes and customs amounted to about EGP 1.144 trillion. He stressed that no additional fees are collected from citizens on governmental electronic collection channels, as they are borne by the state's public treasury, taking into account the social dimension and the directives of the National Payments Council. Furthermore, Maait said that about 96% of electronic government cards that pay the entitlements of state workers have been switched for secured Meeza cards with contactless smart chips for workers in the state's administrative apparatus, explaining that about 21,118 electronic collection machines (GPOS) have been deployed in the administrative authorities. Mohamed Fouad — Head of the Governmental Electronic Payment and Collection Unit at the Ministry of Finance — indicated that the Electronic Payment and Collection Unit plays a pivotal regional role through its constructive participation in cooperation with the assistant minister for economic affairs and the information technology sector at the finance ministry in the COMESA meetings — one of the most important gatherings in the African continent — contributing to the development of proposed standards that member states can follow as digital payment mechanisms; incentives that can be granted to small, medium, and micro enterprises; as well as the unit's growing role in developing and digitising financial systems, electronic payment, and digital transformation in the sister country of Sudan. Additionally, he stressed that work is underway to complete the government billing platform for administrative authorities that do not have a database of automated claims that qualifies them for direct integration with the Electronic Payment and Collection Centre of the ministry, as well as linking and integrating with the Digital Egypt Platform and the digital national converter (G2G) in cooperation with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. This is in addition to linking with the digital system for governance and management of state assets, the government procurement and contracting system, and the electronic invoice system, pointing out that the QR-Code service has been made available through 14,000 government electronic collection machines as an easy and safer way to collect dues during the pandemic.
