On May Day, a new minimum and maximum wage will be announced in Egypt. The purpose of this landmark step is to help people cope with the rise in the prices of different commodities and services, as Egyptian families who are suffering from the country's skyrocketing inflation. However, it was very vexing to see the Government asking for money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, in order to fund these reforms. It is true that the Sharaf' Government has inherited the huge debts run up by its predecessor. Indeed, the production sector has suffered greatly because of the policies of corrupt governments under Mubarak's 30-year rule. However, Egyptians would like their Government to consider untraditional ways of raising money, rather than becoming more indebted to international institutions. The Government could have used some of the huge Suez Canal revenues that used to be powered into the presidential establishment or some of the huge sum that used to be allocated by the State to the Ministry of the Interior. What is more confusing is that, while the Government has been exerting tremendous efforts to convince international institutions to offer Egypt around $5 billion, it is apparently doing little to retrieve the tens of billions of dollars that Mubarak's family and regime purportedly stole and smuggled out of the country. This vast sum would make up for most of the budget deficit, as well as funding the much-needed pay rise and even financing some promising development projects in the country. We would like the Minister of Finance to adopt a new policy, different from that of his predecessor, who relied heavily on the World Bank and the IMF, to whose loans to developing countries tough conditions are attached, making the loans hardly worthwhile at the end of the day.
