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
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