No, I am ignoring the ongoing Live streaming/YouTube/Facebook videos online uprising but what I am writing about in this post is extremely alarming and actually, it is being ignored and dealt with a trivial matter in the mainstream media and social media.
In August, we found according to the Central Bank of Egypt’s statements that it paid nearly USD25 billions of the country’s maturing foreign debts and their interests in the past two years from the end of March 2017 to the end March 2019.
Al-Mal newspaper reported those important findings in a news report that I found a cache version of it online for the time being.
The report says the CBE announced Egypt paid USD 3.04 billion in the first quarter of 2019 “USD 2.1 billion debt installments and USD 946.6 million interests”
“An informal source in the Central Bank of Egypt said that USD 36.7 billion have been paid as debts since 30 June 2013,” The report said.
The report stated that the International Monetary fund predicts that Egypt’s foreign debts would go down to USD 88 billion by 2022 as the “country enjoys the fruits of the economic reforms.
Currently, Egypt has got the highest external debt in its modern history.
We reached USD 106.2 billion in the third quarter of 2019.
It is equal to that number in Egyptian pounds “1,746,990,000,000”
We are speaking about trillions in Egyptian pounds.
Here is a graph for the unfortunate progress of the external debt based on the statements of the CBE and Economy plus ME from 2014 to 2019 or rather the three quarters of 2019.
The Egyptian government has got at least 50.75% of the external debt according to the CBE statements.
The external debt share per Egyptian citizen also increased at the same time the Egyptian population increased to reach USD 996.3 “LE 16,389.13”.
According to CBE’s reports , Egypt’s top creditors in FY2018/19 are International organizations ( For example : IMF and World Bank) with 37.22% , Arab Gulf Countries with 30.2% , Paris Club countries with 19.27% , China with 6.68% and other organizations 6.55% (International banks according to what I understand).
In an Al-Mal Newspaper’s report in June 2019 about Egypt’s top creditors based on countries according to the CBE in September 2018, China is Egypt’s number one creditor with USD 3.7 billion.
It is worth to mention that according to official Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statics “CAPMAS” , 32.5% of the Egyptians are under the Egyptian poverty line.
This is besides Egypt’s huge public debt which reached LE 4.2 trillion by the end of March 2019 Mashallah in a historical record representing 83.3% of the GDP!!
Now for the record, some of those foreign loans are dedicated to important infrastructure projects like investments in solar energy and education “despite all the legit question marks about the current education policies currently being adopted” while other loans for projects I think Egypt does not need in the current time raise questions.
The parliament will start its next and legislative season on 1 October 2019.
I think that there are not many MPs who knew or interested in those numbers so they can ask the government about them like any serious MPs around the globe.
I know that some brainy people will tell me the US and other G5 or G6 or God knows which great nations have got huge public debts "not the external debts" , well they are great countries that lend us money as a developing country. We are a developing struggling country at the end of the day.
Just like the water Nile share and real terrorist organizations, these numbers speak about a true threat to the Egyptian National security as well as the future of Egypt.
This matters.
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| I could not find better than veteran comedian Hassan Honsi's expression to express my feeling while writing down this blog post. "Ghabi Menoh Feh" |
Al-Mal newspaper reported those important findings in a news report that I found a cache version of it online for the time being.
The report says the CBE announced Egypt paid USD 3.04 billion in the first quarter of 2019 “USD 2.1 billion debt installments and USD 946.6 million interests”
“An informal source in the Central Bank of Egypt said that USD 36.7 billion have been paid as debts since 30 June 2013,” The report said.
The report stated that the International Monetary fund predicts that Egypt’s foreign debts would go down to USD 88 billion by 2022 as the “country enjoys the fruits of the economic reforms.
Currently, Egypt has got the highest external debt in its modern history.
We reached USD 106.2 billion in the third quarter of 2019.
It is equal to that number in Egyptian pounds “1,746,990,000,000”
We are speaking about trillions in Egyptian pounds.
Here is a graph for the unfortunate progress of the external debt based on the statements of the CBE and Economy plus ME from 2014 to 2019 or rather the three quarters of 2019.
The Egyptian government has got at least 50.75% of the external debt according to the CBE statements.
The external debt share per Egyptian citizen also increased at the same time the Egyptian population increased to reach USD 996.3 “LE 16,389.13”.
According to CBE’s reports , Egypt’s top creditors in FY2018/19 are International organizations ( For example : IMF and World Bank) with 37.22% , Arab Gulf Countries with 30.2% , Paris Club countries with 19.27% , China with 6.68% and other organizations 6.55% (International banks according to what I understand).
In an Al-Mal Newspaper’s report in June 2019 about Egypt’s top creditors based on countries according to the CBE in September 2018, China is Egypt’s number one creditor with USD 3.7 billion.
It is worth to mention that according to official Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statics “CAPMAS” , 32.5% of the Egyptians are under the Egyptian poverty line.
This is besides Egypt’s huge public debt which reached LE 4.2 trillion by the end of March 2019 Mashallah in a historical record representing 83.3% of the GDP!!
Now for the record, some of those foreign loans are dedicated to important infrastructure projects like investments in solar energy and education “despite all the legit question marks about the current education policies currently being adopted” while other loans for projects I think Egypt does not need in the current time raise questions.
The parliament will start its next and legislative season on 1 October 2019.
I think that there are not many MPs who knew or interested in those numbers so they can ask the government about them like any serious MPs around the globe.
I know that some brainy people will tell me the US and other G5 or G6 or God knows which great nations have got huge public debts "not the external debts" , well they are great countries that lend us money as a developing country. We are a developing struggling country at the end of the day.
Just like the water Nile share and real terrorist organizations, these numbers speak about a true threat to the Egyptian National security as well as the future of Egypt.
This matters.
Perhaps the 12% goes towards taking care of its citizens and their needs.
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