Social dimension programs captures 55 % of total allocations of new general budget.

Minister of Finance, Mr. Hany Kadry Demian declared that the state’s financial policies during the next period shall pursue the achievement of main pillars, of which raising employment as it is the most important and first line protection to fight poverty and to improve living standards, which requires the return of stable local and foreign investment flows.

He added that basic factor which the Ministry of Finance focuses on within the government plan to reach such objective, is to achieve economic stability on aggregate indexes level, particularly, the new fiscal year budget draft reflects an expected deficit of nearly 12,1% of GDP ,while we’re planning to decrease it to nearly 10,5%, which requires the introduction of more reform procedures during the new fiscal year 2014/2015 without expecting receiving big grants.

The Minister said that Ministry of Finance targets to damp down public debt (governmental – domestic and foreign)  80- 85% of  GDP by 2017/2018,  against 94% at the end of June 2013.

The Minister clarified that the government shall develop infrastructure; create new funding mechanisms; enhance economic motivation procedures with new factors, that shall be directed to leading sectors, to activate production through Communication, Manufacturing Industries, Tourism and Housing; in addition to implementing major development projects such as developing the  Suez Canal ,and urbanization projects.

  However, the Minister noted  that adopting the economic and financial policies will aim at distributing financial resources in favor of the lowest-income groups, and also trying to find sustainable financing resources to implement the constitutional entitlements, especially in respect of increasing allocations of Education , Health and scientific research sectors to reach 10% of GDP.

  Mr. Dimian confirmed that a reasonable percentage of the additional financial impact shall be allocated for any economic  procedure to finance all social protection program, first of all increasing number of beneficiaries of social security pension and other programs according to the government action plan.

Meanwhile, the Minister declared that maintaining the state’s economic and financial stability shall require ensuring sustainable finance to self-fund  social programs, i.e. without loans.

The Minister said that developing public treasury, public monies management costs, government procurement system, as well as updating both customs system and fighting tax evasion are on the top of the Ministry’s priorities in the next period.