Egypt's finance minister denied a report published on Monday that the government had raised its budget deficit forecast for this fiscal year to LE150 billion.
Recent reform measures taken by the government to get the deficit under control had succeeded, Momtaz al-Saeed said in a statement on the Finance Ministry website.
The size of the deficit was not expected to exceed LE144 billion, not LE150 million as mentioned by some media outlets, the minister said.
State news agency MENA quoted Deputy Finance Minister Abdel Aziz Mohamed Tantawi on Monday as saying the government had raised its deficit forecast to LE150 billion from an initial LE134 billion.
"This is due to measures the government took to satisfy demands by labor groups and expenses related to elections," MENA quoted Tantawi as telling Parliament's Budget and Planning Committee.
Cairo is struggling to stave off a fiscal crisis following more than a year of political and economic turmoil and is seeking a US$3.2 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund.
The government made the lower forecast, which was equivalent to about 8.7 percent of the gross domestic product, when it originally drew up its budget for the financial year that began on 1 July 2011.
The finance minister in his statement said the ministry was closely watching government expenditures and working to find new sources of revenue, including better tax collection.
