ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Egypt targets to reduce its budget deficit by 3 or 4 percent during the current fiscal year, the country's finance minister said on Tuesday.
"The national projects that started in 2014 led to improvement of the economic conditions and we managed to reduce the total budget deficit amid increasing debt interests," Finance Minister Amr al-Garhy told a youth conference held at the seaside city of Alexandria and attended by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.
Egypt has been facing economic recession over the past few years due to political turmoil and relevant security issues, which led to declining tourism and foreign investments amid growing budget deficit, inflation rate and foreign and domestic debts.
"For seven years, we have been working amid a budget deficit of 11 percent, which reached 14 percent in one of the years," said the finance minister, noting that the growth rate has been unprecedently stable since 2014.
The country started last year a three-year economic reform program, which includes austerity measures, energy subsidy cuts and a floating exchange rate.
The reform program is supported by a 12-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund, a third of which has already been delivered to Egypt in two tranches.
"We should move from talking about an economic reform program to an economic growth program," said Garhy, noting that the unemployment rate has reached 12 percent which requires further economic growth to provide job opportunities.
