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Egypt's government to cut spending up to 20 pct

Xinhua, October 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Egyptian government announced on Thursday its decision to cut down spending by 15 to 20 percent to limit the country's budget deficit, state-run Al-Ahram news website reported.

The report said that the cabinet approved the decisions of an economic ministerial commission to minimize spending in the budgets of all ministries, government institutions, state companies and administrative authorities.

The government also decided to reduce the personnel of its ministerial foreign representatives by 50 percent, saying their tasks will be carried out by foreign ministry diplomats instead.

"The rationalization of spending will by no means affect the wages, salaries or the investment budget," the government assured.

Egypt has been suffering economic recession over the past five years of political turmoil and relevant security issues, leading to the decline of tourism, exports, foreign investments and foreign currency reserves.

The country's budget deficit has exceeded 35 billion U.S. dollars in the outgoing fiscal year 2015/2016, which led the country to resort to a 12 billion dollars loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whose initial agreement was reached in August. Endit