"A sign of crisis"
Egypt's military government is amassing debts to international lenders at record rates. With fiscal austerity measures biting, the country's poor and middle class are struggling to get by. By Tom Stevenson
On 29 September, the Central Bank of Egypt released statistics showing the country's total foreign debt had risen 41 per cent, to $79 billion, in a single year. Egypt's debt totalled $34.4 billion, half current levels, as recently as 2012. Foreign debt has risen to 34 per cent of GDP according to central bank figures.
Analysis conducted by Salma Hussein, a researcher in economic and social justice at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), and the author of a 2016 study on Egypt's debt, shows changes in the character of and politics associated with the debt. "There is a rapid increase in foreign debt since November 2016, and when you look, the central bank is responsible for most of this debt, meaning there is a huge amount of foreign debt that is taken on totally away from the eyes of parliament," Hussein told Qantara.de.