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Egypt's Economy Isn't Booming, It's Collapsing
(Foreign Policy) Yehia Hamed - Financial commentators have taken to calling Egypt the world's hottest emerging market. But this obscures a darker reality. A report published by the World Bank in April 2019 found that "60% of Egypt's population is either poor or vulnerable." Overall living conditions are sliding rapidly. The government's chronic mismanagement of public finances and overall negligence has caused external debt to rise nearly fivefold in the past five years, due to depreciation of the Egyptian pound, and public debt to more than double. The government currently allocates 38% of its entire budget merely to pay off the interest on its outstanding debt. Add loans and installments, and more than 58% is eaten up. The writer is Egypt's former minister of investment.