• 86 billion pounds, the total wages by 27% of the total expenditure with an increase of 9 billion pounds in the previous year.

• Increase of public spending on education, health, and increasing the volume of subsidized food commodities and the social security pension.

• The draft budget does not include taxes or new charges, and an expected drop in tax revenue.

Dr. Youssef Boutros Ghali and Minister of Finance, assured that the Government's commitment is to care and protection of low-income people and raise the wages of state employees and work to stimulate the local economy to create jobs, noting that these goals are the pillars of the draft general budget for the fiscal year 2009/2010 and the most basic priorities.

He refered that the new budget aimed at strengthening domestic demand to boost economic growth rates in terms of moving the expectations that the rate of economic growth will be about 3% and 4% in 2009/2010 at a time where the average growth rates of developing countries and emerging markets, while about 1.6% ,while the great States suffer from the major economies in a negative growth rate of approximately 3.8% as the new budget is designed to guide public spending as a tool to raise the rates of economic development and support services and community needs and to maximize public revenue of the state and directed the best guidance to meet the requirements of public expenditure and the social dimension of a strategic objective for the implementation of the policy of the State and support the decentralization and maximizing the role of municipals and contribution of local public investment in the provision of the requirements of development and as a basis for building community assets and to increase domestic production and encourage investment flows to Egypt to increase employment opportunities and employment.

Dr. Ghali declared that the draft budget for the new fiscal year includes an increase of allocations for education, health, and increase the number of beneficiaries from supported food commodities and raise the number of beneficiaries of social security pension in addition to increasing quantities of food commodities and oil, and the continued support of drinking water, transport and communications, medicine and health insurance and low-income housing and support the development level This is despite the expected decline in public revenues from a slowdown in economic activity affected by the global economic crisis.

And he emphasized that the new budget expenditures are estimated at about 319 billion pounds, which forced the government to increase appropriations of wages by 12% for 2008/2009 is expected to increase 9 billion pounds to 86.1 billion pounds, which represents about 5.4 million wages of government employees.

As the expense for the purchase of goods and services increased by 10% to 27 billion pounds, as well as maintenance expenses increased by 18.6% in order to maintain the integrity of state assets and infrastructure, which was invested in it during the past years also increased the appropriation for the purchase of medicines, serums and vaccines and food to schools and institutes, government and total funds allocated to support grants and social benefits by 73.4 billion pounds, representing about 23% of the total expenditure and budgetary allocations for the support of approximately 59.8 billion pounds, by 18.7% of the total expenses, including 13.8 billion pounds for the supply of goods and 33.7 billion pounds in subsidies for petroleum products.

(Source: Ministry of Finance)