By Ashraf Sadek: CAIRO, August 2, 2018 - Prime Minister Dr Moustafa Madbouli Wednesday instructed the government to draw up a strategy for reducing public debt and the budget deficit so as to achieve high economic growth rates. Prime Minister Madbouli, who presided over Wednesday's weekly cabinet meeting to discuss a raft of domestic issues, urged the ministers to present a strategy in this regard as soon as possible. "Reducing the domestic debt, which is a priority on the government's agenda and a main component of the economic reform programme, needs a clear vision and prompt action by the government," Prime Minister Madbouli said during the meeting. "The government will work on reducing the public debt at a faster pace, according to the proposed strategy, which will be reviewed by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi," he said. "Reducing the domestic debt is the real challenge facing the government and we need to exert an unprecedented effort to overcome it, while maintaining the stability and sustainability of the Egyptian economy," Prime Minister Madbouli said during the meeting. He said that the cabinet had approved an agreement aimed at enhancing inter-Arab co-operation with the Cairo-based Arab League (AL). The cabinet approved a draft presidential decree according to which Egypt would join the Arab Charter of Human Rights, which had been ratified by the AL member states in 2004, Prime Minister Madbouli said. The charter governs and protects the human, civil, political, economic and cultural rights of citizens in the Arab World. The AL member states approved the setting up of a special mechanism for ensuring that the signatory states were committed to following-up and implementing the articles of the charter. Madbouli added that the cabinet had ratified a pact between Egypt and Bangladesh which would strengthen economic, trade, investment and educational ties between the two countries. The prime minister said that the cabinet had agreed to offer tourism company owners in the governorates Aswan, Luxor and South Sinai another six-month period of grace, to pay their overdue taxes to the government. The period will end on December 31, 2018. "The cabinet also agreed to withdraw some of the ongoing housing projects from incompetent construction companies because they had failed to complete them according to schedule," Madbouli said. He said that the cabinet had approved the launching of a LE2.5 billion project for developing education services nationwide. "The multi-component project is aimed at upgrading 2,500 schools and installing information technology facilities in some educational facilities nationwide," Prime Minister Madbouli added. Later on, Prime Minister Madbouli attended the signing of a 205-million-euro agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for financing a 751-million-euro project aimed at improving the first underground Metro line in Cairo. Investment and International Co-operation Minister Sahar Nasr and Ms Janet Heckman, the Managing Director of Southern and Eastern Mediterranean at the EBRD, signed the legal documents for the two-phase project, which will add new technologies and infrastructure utilities to the Helwan-el-Marg Metro line. "The first phase of the project will include upgrading the line's electronic signals, communications system and control centres. The second phase will include improving the electro-mechanical systems of the line and the procurement of new units for it," said the Minister of Transport, Eng Hisham Arafat.
