Staff report: CAIRO, May 17, 2018 - The Minister of Finance Amr El-Garhy approved LE4.l5 billion in urgent allocations for the month of April for various commodities, the Railway Authority, and the General Authority for Health Insurance and the National Media Board. Part of the allocations, a sum of LE4 billion was allocated to the General Authority For Supply Commodities (GASC) to finance the subsidised commodities including subsidised bread, according to a statement by the Ministry of Finance. A sum of LE62.5 million was allocated for the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Sewage. According to the statement, LE4.3 million was allocated to the employees of the three irrigation companies. In another development, the finance minister reviewed with the Cabinet on Thursday the recent results on Egypt's global credit rating. The Minister said that global ratings agency Standard & Poor had lifted Egypt's sovereign credit rating to B from B-. The improvement in the country's global credit rating on the medium-and-long term will have a positive impact on the whole economic outlook, he said. El-Garhy said, during the Cabinet meeting on Thursday, that the upgrade in the country's rating would help the targeted economic growth rate. He also noted that the country was still suffering from high debt, a matter that needed to be considered. The Minister added that the rise in the price of oil globally was due to a production cut by OPEC. "The Ministry is monitoring the prices of oil globally in order to predict the impact on the local economy," according to el-Gharhy.
