Egypt beyond economic stabilization: the road to sustainable growth

Faced with major internal and external imbalances, the Egyptian government in November 2016 implemented a three-year economic reform program supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The program focused on restoring the balance of the economy through major reforms in the areas of fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies; reforming energy subsidies; improving government finances through the implementation of the value-added taxes (VAT), and applying an improved system for social safety nets. The program also included structural reforms in the energy sector, privatization, improved infrastructure, and investment climate.

As the program reached its conclusion in November 2019, with significant improvement in containing domestic absorption and in some structural issues, challenges remain for sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Domestic private investment still needs stimulation and foreign direct investment (FDI) – aside from the energy sector – is still weak. Moreover, privatization is lagging, human capital development continues to be problematic, and major issues related to red tape, inefficiency, and redefining the roles of public and private sectors persist.

Accordingly, a new phase of economic reforms is needed to tackle the remaining problems on the supply side of the Egyptian economy to increase its efficiency and to achieve sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

Economic problems before November 2016

The Egyptian economy suffered from major inefficiencies, distortions, and imbalances from January 2011 till November 2016. It faced increased pressures resulting from slow economic growth and high levels of unemployment, because of the lack of private investment, both local and foreign. The economy suffered from high levels of inflation and crowding out of the private sector as a result of an expansionary fiscal policy – mainly because of exceptional social spending. This led to an expanding budget deficit increasingly financed directly from the Central Bank of Egypt and the domestic banking system in the form of accommodating monetary policy.

These expansionary fiscal and monetary policies caused major internal and external imbalances. Egypt suffered from expanding twin deficits in both the government budget and the current account of the balance of payments (BoP). As the current account deficit expanded, the lack of FDI, the reversal of portfolio investment flow, and the increased difficulties of accessing the international financial markets drained foreign reserves, creating a parallel market for the foreign exchange and exerted intense pressure on the official exchange rate.

Meanwhile, a long history of import substitution strategies, heavy energy and electricity subsidies, an overvalued nominal exchange rate, and negative real interest rates, led to major economic distortions and inefficiencies. It also led to a bias in favor of energy and capital-intensive import substitutes, while working against labor-intensive, export-oriented industries that are most efficient for labor endowed Egyptian economy.

Human capital development in Egypt also suffered from the lack of fiscal space as wages, subsidies and interest payments took over government expenditure. This hampered the pursuit of efficiency for economic growth and caused deterioration of Egypt’s rankings in healthcare and education in the international indicators.

Finally, the lack of funding and the instability that set in after January 2011 led to a deterioration in infrastructure and shortages of electricity and water supplies. The over-employment in the public sector, lack of access to financial services, red tape, widespread corruption, regulatory bottlenecks, and legislative rigidity resulted in a deterioration in the Ease of Doing Business and Global Competitiveness indicators for Egypt.

Reforms and achievements

Faced with mounting imbalances and inefficiencies, Egypt chose to enter into a reform program, from November 2016 to November 2019, supported by a US$12 billion extended arrangement with the IMF. The objectives of the program included restoring macroeconomic stability, reducing the budget deficit and public debt, promoting inclusive growth, creating jobs, correcting external imbalances and restoring competitiveness while protecting the most vulnerable groups of the Egyptian society from the costs of reforms.

The program worked on performing significant policy adjustments, structural reforms and creating social safety net through a comprehensive set of actions as follows:

Exchange rate reform

On November 3, 2016, and before signing the IMF Agreement, the Central Bank of Egypt surprised the markets by announcing a devaluation of the Egyptian Pound by 32.5 percent against the US Dollar. Within a few days, the Central Bank removed restrictions on setting rates by banks, allowing the exchange rate to be floated and to be market-determined without intervention.

During the first phase of the reform program, the Central Bank raised the policy interest rates significantly (by 700 basis points). It set an official mechanism for foreign investors in government securities to guarantee the availability of foreign exchange through official channels while repatriating funds. The significantly higher domestic interest rates, the floating exchange rate, and the repatriation mechanism helped in attracting large inflows of foreign portfolio investment. They also encouraged the residents of Egypt to reverse the dollarization phenomenon that prevailed before the reform program and helped tremendously in rebuilding the international reserves at the Central Bank of Egypt.

Later on, during the late phase of the reform program, and after a significant period of international reserves building and regaining the confidence of foreign investors in the Egyptian Pound, the repatriation mechanism was halted after it had achieved its objectives. With the continued inflow of portfolio foreign investment, plus a robust performance from the tourism sector and workers’ remittances, the Egyptian Pound experienced a significant period of appreciation against the US Dollar.

Monetary policy reforms

The Central Bank worked to contain inflation initially by tightening the monetary policy via consecutive increases in policy interest rates and halted excess liquidity in the money market by introducing deposit auctions for the banks. The Central Bank also worked on strengthening its independence and preventing the dominance of the fiscal policy over the monetary policy by signing a protocol with the Ministry of Finance on limiting direct Central Bank financing of the budget through overdrafts.

During the program, and after floating the exchange rate, the Central Bank chose a monetary policy framework based on money targeting, while setting the grounds for implementing inflation targeting in the future. The monetary policy was set to focus on bringing the inflation rate down to single digits in the medium term, and a target for the inflation rate was set at 9% ± 3% for the fourth quarter of 2020. The Central Bank worked on increasing the effectiveness of the monetary policy through controlling credit to government, by strengthening its capacity to forecast and manage liquidity, by improving transparency and communication mainly through issuing a quarterly Monetary Policy Report and an annual Financial Stability Report.

Fiscal policy reforms

The 2016 reform program tackled the fiscal policy reforms as the main element to prevent any public debt problem and to ensure its sustainability. To achieve this objective, the program targeted maintaining a primary budget surplus (i.e. before taking into account the interest payments on public debt) of 2 percent of the GDP to guarantee a declining public debt and to have fiscal space for spending on priorities such as infrastructure, healthcare, and education.

To achieve the targeted primary surplus, tax revenues were set to increase largely through the implementation of the VAT, while primary expenditures were to be reduced through the reduction of subsidies and containing the wage bill. To reduce subsidies, energy prices were raised regularly to achieve a pre-tax full cost recovery for fuel by 2018/19, and to eliminate electricity subsidies over five-years.

Structural reforms

The 2016 reform program included several structural reforms intended to increase the efficiency in the economy. The program was meant to remove the obstacles facing sustainable inclusive growth, which limited the job creation among the youth. These reforms included measures for improving public finance management, simplifying business regulations, strengthening governance in general and specifically in public enterprises. Also, the energy sector reforms were planned to modernize the sector by improving the regulatory framework for enabling private investments and promoting competition.

Other structural reforms included improvement of the licensing regime and the introduction of a one-stop-shop for licenses. A new law was formulated for single proprietorship companies, and for abolishing industrial licensing except industries that affect vital public interests. A new insolvency law was drafted to be in line with the best international standards, to simplify bankruptcy procedures and to de-criminalize insolvency. A resumption of privatization was envisaged through the announcement of a five-year IPO program as part of the government’s agenda to improve the management of public assets, and to attract private investment, and was accompanied by the setting up of a new sovereign wealth fund.

Egypt also worked on strengthening the public procurement system to increase its transparency, fairness, reduction of corruption, and to optimize public spending. A new Government Procurement Law was approved, and worked on standardizing government procurement processes to encourage broad and competitive participation by the private sector, and applied uniformly on all government entities’ tenders covered by the law, and to ensure that the procurement rules are consistent with best practices. Also, public procurement is planned to move from a paper-based system to a single e-procurement portal.

Other structural reforms targeting the improvement of the business climate included the establishment of a collateral registry to facilitate access to finance especially for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and implementing reforms for the export promotion regime and minimization of the non-tariff barriers to trade.

Social safety net reforms

The reform program took into consideration the need to protect the most vulnerable groups in the society through numerous measures that included an additional 1 percent of GDP increase on food subsidies and cash transfers to the poor through the social programs of Takaful and Karama. Better targeting of food subsidies was planned through improving the smart card system for essential food rationing.

Main achievements of the reform program

The program succeeded in improving almost all the macroeconomic indicators for the Egyptian economy as the real GDP growth increased from 4.3 percent in 2015/16 (fiscal year starts July 1^st) to 5.5 percent in 2018/19 and was estimated to be 6 percent in the medium term. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate declined from 12.7 percent in 2015/16 to 8.8 percent in 2018/19. As for the inflation rate, the initial evaluation and adjustment of fuel prices led to a spike in it to reach 29.8 percent in 2016/17, but the prudent monetary policy that tackled the second-round effects led to a continuous decline of the inflation rate to reach 12.4 percent by the end of 2018/19.

As for the budget sector, the consolidation efforts succeeded in switching the primary deficit of -3.5 percent of the GDP in 2015/16 to a primary surplus of 2.0 percent in 2018/19, which led the overall budget deficit to decline from -12.5 percent of the GDP to -8.2 percent for the mentioned dates consecutively. The primary surplus and the declining overall deficit led the public debt to decline as a ratio of the GDP from 96.9 percent in 2015/16 to 85.2 percent in 2018/19, which helped in limiting the inflationary pressures and the crowding-out effect on the private sector.

Source: IMF.

On the external sector front, the initial devaluation then floatation of the exchange rate helped in improving the trade balance as a percentage of the GDP from -14.5 percent in 2015/16 to -12.8 percent in 2018/19. On the other hand, the fiscal consolidation and the prudent monetary policy helped in limiting the internal imbalances and improved the external imbalance of the current account of the BoP to register a decline in its deficit as a ratio of GDP from -5.6 percent in 2015/16 to -2.5 percent in 2018/19.

Meanwhile, the resumption of the portfolio investment inflows to Egypt, and the return of its ability to access the international financial markets under favorable conditions, let the capital and financial account of the BoP to register surpluses that helped Egypt in rebuilding its international reserves from a merely US$ 17.1 billion covering three months of imports by the end of 2015/16, to US$ 43.9 billion covering 5.9 months of imports by the end of 2018/19.

Challenges to sustainable economic growth

Even as the IMF program significantly contained domestic absorption and resolved some structural issues, challenges to sustainable and inclusive economic growth remain in Egypt. Domestic private investment still needs stimulation, FDI is still weak and Egypt is heavily dependent on external debt flows and foreign portfolio investment in government securities to close its external financing gap. Also, privatization and public-private-partnerships are lagging, human capital development is still problematic, and major issues related to red tape, inefficiency, and redefining the roles of public and private sectors persist.

The major criteria for improving the supply side of the Egyptian economy could be looked at from the international comparisons related to the efficiency and competitiveness of Egypt as reflected in two major indices, and their sub-indices, that track the following aspects:

1. Ease of Doing Business: The World Bank publishes an annual report that tracks and compares 190 countries in their effort to improve the rules and regulations benefiting the economic activity of small and medium-size domestic firms. These rules allow voluntary exchanges between economic actors, set out strong property rights, facilitate the resolution of commercial disputes, and provide contractual partners with protections against arbitrariness and abuse. Such rules are much more effective in promoting growth and development when they are efficient, transparent, and accessible to those for whom they are intended, and would create an environment where new entrants with drive and innovative ideas can get started in business and where productive firms can invest, expand, and create new jobs.(World Bank Group, 2020, p. 18)
2. The Global Competitiveness: The World Economic Forum publishes an annual report that creates a yardstick for policy-makers to look beyond short-term and reactionary measures and to instead assess their progress against the full set of factors that determine productivity. These are organized into 12 pillars: institutions; infrastructure; ICT adoption; macroeconomic stability; health; skills; product market; labor market; financial system; market size; business dynamism; and innovation capability.(World Economic Forum, 2019, p. v)

Performance under the Ease of Doing Business Index

Source: Doing Business Reports, World Bank Group.

Egypt’s overall ranking in the Ease of Doing Business index improved with the implementation of the 2016 reforms program. The overall ranking improved by 14 places between 2017 (measured in the 2018 report), and 2019 (measured in the 2019 report). However, Egypt has a long way to go in achieving a dynamic, hospitable business environment for the private sector as its overall ranking – even after the improvement – still needs a lot of improvement as it ranks 114 among 190 economies.

While considering the areas that need maximum improvement, and should be considered as a priority, the following could be considered as the top five areas in need for reforms:

• Egypt is still lagging in the area of free international trade as its current ranks 171 of the 190 economies in the “Trading Across Borders” index.
• The legal system covering business activities needs to improve as Egypt is ranked 166 among the 190 economies in the ease of “Enforcing Contracts”, and 104 in the ease of “Resolving Insolvency”.
• The tax administration needs a comprehensive reform effort, as Egypt is currently ranked 159 among the 190 economies in the ease of “Paying Taxes”.
• The red tape needs to be tackled as Egypt ranks 130 among the 190 economies in the ease of “Registering Properties”, 90 in the ease of “Starting a Business”, 77 in the ease of “Getting Electricity”, and 74 in the ease of “Dealing with Construction Permits”.
• The Financial System could be improved further as Egypt is ranked 67 in the ease of “Getting Credit”. This area has improved significantly as Egypt used to be ranked 90 three years earlier.

Global Competitiveness Index

Source: The Global Competitiveness Reports, World Economic Forum.

Egypt’s overall ranking in the Global Competitiveness index improved with the implementation of the 2016 reform program, as its overall ranking reached 93 out of 141 countries in 2019 compared to 100 out of 137 countries in 2017/18.

To improve efficiency further, and to enhance the competitiveness of the Egyptian economy and its integration with the global economy, the following areas need further improvement and should be considered as a priority for the next step of reform:

• Human capital development, as Egypt is currently ranked 104 among 141 countries in “health”, and 99 in “skills” related to higher education and training.
• Improving the regulations and the efficiency of the labor market as Egypt is ranked 126 in “Labor Market Efficiency”.
• The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) needs improvement as Egypt is ranked 106 in “ICT Adoption”.
• Removal of remaining distortions in the goods markets is needed to increase their efficiency as Egypt is ranking 100 in the “Goods Market” sub-index.
• The business environment could be improved further as Egypt is ranked 95 in the “Business Dynamism” sub-index.

Based on the performance of the Egyptian economy in creating a suitable climate for the development of private, medium, and small firms that creates jobs and achieves sustainable and inclusive growth in the “Ease of Doing Business Index”, and its performance in efficiency and dynamism needed to play a more active role in the global economy and to achieve a higher degree of integration reflected in the “Global Competitiveness Index”, an integrated framework for the next set of reforms should form the basis of structural and social policies for the medium to long term.

CHEP: A policy framework for sustainable growth

CHEP is an integrated structural reform framework that covers the areas mentioned in the previous section where the achievements could be measured through continuous improvement in the Doing Business Index, and the Global Competitiveness Index. The suggested framework covers four major pillars – Competitiveness Improvement, Human Capital Development, Efficiency Enhancement, and Private Sector Participation.

Competitiveness Improvement: Egypt should look at optimizing the use of resources to reflect its comparative advantage stemming from this labor-abundant country. Achieving such an objective would help Egypt in improving its external competitiveness in a framework that targets a more open economy, integrated with the global economy. To achieve this objective, the following is required:

• Sustaining macroeconomic stability: Egypt should continue following sound fiscal and monetary policies that keep the inflation rate at a single digit, and maintain the internal and external balances by maintaining a positive primary budget balance, minimizing the overall budget deficit, positive real interest rates, and having an independent monetary policy not subject to fiscal dominance.
• Sustaining the floating exchange rate system: The Central Bank of Egypt should continue the new efficient system and not interfere in the foreign exchange market to support an overvalued Egyptian Pound. The combination of a moderate, single-digit inflation rate and a flexible nominal exchange rate that is not overvalued should help prevent the loss of external competitiveness of the Egyptian economy.
• Focusing on labor-intensive sectors: Egypt’s comparative advantage lies in its labor-intensive sectors. Accordingly, eliminating distortions in the relative prices of the factors of production, through keeping a positive real interest rate and the removal of energy subsidies would send the right signals for achieving the efficient allocation of resources toward labor-intensive sectors. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) usually dominate such sectors, and promoting them would help in improving the competitiveness of the Egyptian economy and creating job opportunities to sustain an inclusive growth record.
• Reforming the external trade regime: Switching from a trade policy based to a large degree on protectionism and import substitution to one based on relatively open trade system and export promotion would be a key element in improving the external competitiveness of the Egyptian economy, as it would lead to a more efficient allocation of resources. This will require reforms in both the tariff and the non-tariff barriers to trade, through simplifying the tariff regime and making it less distortive, and by removing red tape facing exporters and importers that lead to a loss in time and higher cost for involving in external trade activities.   

Human Capital Development: As discussed earlier, Egypt’s comparative advantage lies in its labor-abundant characteristics. Accordingly, to unlock the full potential of the Egyptian economy, the priority should be given to the continuous improvement of its labor force. This will require the following:

• Fiscal space for prioritizing government spending on education and healthcare: Before the 2016 reform program, the government in Egypt prioritized current spending on wages and salaries, subsidies, and interest payments, over investing in human capital by focusing on education and healthcare. Now, and after the fiscal consolidation performed through the last three years, the focus should be on gaining the fiscal space needed for investing in human capital.
• A better match between output and market skills: The deterioration of Egypt’s ranking in international comparisons focusing on education resulted from a long-standing policy of providing almost free higher education through mass production of university graduates without guaranteeing the quality of education and the relevance of their degrees to the skills required by the market. The focus shifted to social sciences and vocational training, and quality control of the educational process was sidelined. Now, the focus should be on reforming the education system to match the required skills by the market. A long-term strategy should be developed and implemented to benefit from successful international experiences instead of short-term actions that change with the top officials responsible for education.

Efficiency Enhancement: Improving efficiency in market mechanisms and areas such as ICT, accompanied by an increased degree of financial inclusion are key elements in achieving sustainable and inclusive growth in developing countries and emerging markets. Key reform areas are as follows:

• The efficiency of input markets: The efficiency of the input markets (Labor, capital, energy, and land) needs to be improved by removing the remaining distortions, and providing the correct signals to guide the optimal allocation of resources. This would include simplifying regulations and making it more transparent, working on improving the mechanisms for resolving disputes, correcting the price-setting mechanisms and developing electronic platforms as virtual online markets.
• Improving the efficiency of the output markets: Similar to the input markets, goods and services markets need reforms to increase transparency and efficiency of price setting mechanisms, solidifying anti-trust regulations, promoting e-commerce, and efficient and fair mechanisms for solving disputes.
• ICT advancement and financial inclusion: ICT advancement is needed to promote an online business, and to achieve a higher level of financial inclusion that would help improve opportunities for micro, small and medium enterprises. The experience of many developing countries shows that mobile banking is a key element of financial inclusion, especially in remote and rural areas, and such advancement in financial inclusion helped in achieving sustainable and inclusive growth.

Private Sector Participation: Increasing the relative importance of the private sector contribution to economic growth is the key to efficiency and sustainable and inclusive growth. This should be done through allowing the space for the private sector to flourish by minimizing the crowding-out effects of increased public sector activities, solving the hurdles facing private investment, and working on creating public-private partnerships (PPP) in expanding areas of developing infrastructure and key projects by the government:

• Privatization and PPP: Revitalizing the privatization program is considered to be a key component of the structural reform efforts by the Egyptian government. Privatizing minority shares in public-private joint ventures is a starting point, but such effort should be expanded gradually to cover key public enterprises such as public sector banks. Meanwhile, the government could achieve the dual objectives of minimizing the borrowing requirements for financing key infrastructure projects and activating the private sector through more dependence on PPP for executing projects.
• Cutting red tape and fighting corruption: The Egyptian government is intensifying its efforts in fighting corruption and simplifying procedures. However, further improvements are needed to create a fully transparent, fair, and effective administration friendlier to the private sectors. Areas such as international trade, licensing, and government procurement are priorities for administrative reforms.
• Tax administration reforms: Tax administration is a very specific case that needs urgent reforms to increase private sector participation in economic activities. Increasing the transparency of the tax administration, clarifying and unifying the rules, simplifying tax payment procedures, and resolving disputes are integral parts of such effort. An option worth considering to guarantee efficiency is the ministry of finance making tax administration an autonomous independent agency.
• Downsizing the government, simplifying procedures and investing in e-government: The enormous size of the government sector in Egypt stands as one of the main hurdles to an efficient system that solves the problems of the private sector and facilitates its work instead of creating obstacles. The government sector needs to study the options of implementing an early retirement program that would help in downsizing the size of its labor force while avoiding potential social side effects. Simultaneously, the government should intensify effort in simplifying its procedures and expanding the implementation of the e-government to facilitate the work of the private sector.     

Conclusion

Even as the Egyptian economic reform program with the IMF ended with significant improvement in containing domestic absorption and in some structural issues, challenges remain for sustainable economic growth. Domestic private investment still needs stimulation, FDI is still weak, privatization is lagging, human capital development is still problematic, and there are major issues related to red tape, inefficiency, and redefining the roles of public and private sectors.

Accordingly, a new phase of economic reforms is needed to tackle the remaining problems on the supply side of the Egyptian economy to increase efficiency and to achieve sustainable economic growth. These reforms should target the policies related to improving human capital, increasing the role of the private sector through – enter alia – activating privatization and encouraging PPPs, removing the remaining distortions, cutting red tape, and working mainly on achieving significant improvements on Egypt’s global ranking in almost all components of the Human Development Index, the Doing Business Index, and the Global Competitiveness Index.

To achieve sustainable and inclusive growth, a policy framework for enhancing the supply side of the economy, driven by improving Egypt’s global ranking in the components the Doing Business Index, and the Global Competitiveness Index, is recommended. This policy framework works on reforming four major pillars, with the acronym (CHEP), namely: Competitiveness Improvement, Human Capital Development, Efficiency Enhancement, and Private Sector Participation.

References

• IMF, Arab Republic of Egypt: Request for Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility – Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Arab Republic of Egypt, January 2017.
• IMF, Arab Republic of Egypt: First Review under the Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility and Request for Waivers for Nonobservance and Applicability of Performance Criteria – Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Arab Republic of Egypt, September 2017.
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• World Bank Group, Egypt: Enabling Private Investment and Commercial Financing in Infrastructure, 2018.
• Central Bank of Egypt, Monthly Statistical Bulletin.