Economic expert Mustafa al-Nasharty firmly disagreed with Egypt's new finance minister, Hazem al-Beblawy, who said he has not ruled out borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nasharty said borrowing from the IMF would impose economic and political constraints on Egypt, noting Egypt's commitment to implement economic reform as a condition of IMF loans at the beginning of the 1990s. Nasharty said Egypt pursued brutal policies to meet the IMF conditions, including implementing the model of free economy and privatization, which left negative social and economic effects on Egyptian citizens. Implementing such policies was one of the most important factors leading to the outbreak of Egypt's January 25 Revolution, according to Nasharty. He said the revolution demanded social justice, which contradicts IMF policies. Nasharty added that Egypt can find other solutions to replace borrowing from the IMF through implementing policies that balance a market economy with social justice. He called for restructuring the Egyptian economy to increase production of commodities and services in addition to changing the policy of financing the budget deficit to avoid taking loans from the IMF. The only way to curb Egypt's deficit is by implementing an austerity policy in governmental spending, similar to what the Greek government is doing, said Nasharty. He called for dissolving Egypt's Central Security Forces and releasing 400,000 of its employees to provide 10 billion EGP (U.S. $1.7 billion) to the budget. Rationalizing energy subsidies through imposing fees of industries that use excessive amounts of energy or add to pollution, including cars over 1500cc, would provide 60 billion EGP (U.S. $11 billion), according to Nasharty. Egyptian economic experts have demanded a reduction in governmental spending as a drastic solution to the budget deficit and to treat the problem of economic subordination, which would come as a result of obtaining loans from international institutions. Nasharty called upon Beblawy to achieve a balance between the market economy and social justice, emphasizing the need to reformulate Egypt's economic policies to achieve the revolution's objectives.
