Mohammed Maeet, Egypt’s finance minister, discusses structural reforms and ways to tackle the high debt faced by the country.
And speaking of these emerging markets we’re here inside egypt where yesterday i caught up for an exclusive interview with the country’s finance minister and i asked him how worried he is about that kind of contagion let’s listen in to what he had to say it is worrying however we are able until now to observe these negative effects and egypt economy is a diversified
One egypt economy has sources to address this however i have to be very honest up to a limit so hopefully that what is happening would be corrected and we’ll move into a stable position because yes we are observing all these shocks oil prices emerging markets problems increasing interest rate and all of that but again if it did it could if they continue like that
It will be a problem for us basically you have argentina you have turkey but also egypt has a high amount of debt and the question is are you just increasing that and and really just paying down the debt you already have how worried are you that egypt won’t be able to sustain its current level of development over the coming year given what we’re seeing another
Emerging market we are addressing that we know we’re who like we recognizing that we have a high level of debt and we have to reduce it yes we know that the government is working on that by policies which will be approved in the coming few weeks to reduce the level of that this is number one number two is a hint on some of those policies we for example try to
Encourage structure reform in our economy try to put targets for the level of pouring externally and internally also the type of debt we are gonna peru will have to reshaped many many elements with an upper to four you and eventually this will address the issue of reducing the level of death and the level of deterrence but eventually we need our economy to grow
Because with our economy growing creating jobs creating more revenue means that our revenue growth is much faster than our expenditure growth which can also help us to reduce the level of power speaking of that kind of growth of course later today nancy i’m going to be heading out to what is essentially a new administrative capital here in egypt essentially they’re
Building a city the size of singapore it’s gonna accommodate some six million egyptians they’re gonna open this as early as 2019 if they’re gonna bring all the ministries out there but in terms of financing that they’ve got a long way to go before that project is complete that’s another mega project just like we saw with the extension of the suez canal a couple of
Years ago it’s really being executed by the military even though they’ve been working within the private sector to get that done and of course they’ve got some 18 billion dollars needed in updating their electricity infrastructure over the next few years of course this is something that they’re gonna be watching really closely because they’ve not only got to pay
Down that debt as he says to me earlier in that interview but he also is talking about really being able to continue financing all these big public spending projects and really trying to at some point galvanized the private sector to get involved as well yeah certainly happy if they’re spending all that money in the megacity you don’t want to see a time in which
Global growth slows that could affect the region if you want to see investment into that project as well hey everybody its hadley gamble from our new cnbc middle east bureau in abu dhabi thanks for stopping by now to watch more you can try one of the videos that just popped up on your screen and don’t forget to subscribe
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Egypt finance minister: We recognise we have high level of debt | Capital Connection By CNBC International TV
