Finance Minister Mohamed Maait assured that there are no new burdens in Egypt’s tax policy strategy for 2024/2030, no increase in tax rates, and that the brackets are stable.
The Finance Ministry will not move a single step towards approving this document before holding a community dialogue, he said, stressing that there will be no prejudice to the commercial and industrial profits tax.
“We want the factories to operate, produce and provide job opportunities,” the minister said, assuring there will also be no prejudice to the income tax rate.
He added that tax exemption limit will be raised by 33 percent to reduce the burden on all state workers, including the private sector, on March 1.
Maait noted that the state’s public finances will witness a structural reform to approve the “general government budget” so that it includes the total revenues and expenditures of the state’s general budget, and the budgets of economic bodies.
With this legislative amendment to the unified public finance law, tax revenues will not exceed 35 percent of general government revenues estimated at five trillion pounds, Maait added.
During the annual tax conference of the PwC, the minister affirmed the consistency of the state’s public finances in a way reflected the balanced and reassuring performance of the budget during the past seven months.
The negative repercussions of the exceptional global economic challenges, the complexity of which increases with international geopolitical tensions following the outbreak of war in Gaza, has impacted the performance of the Egyptian economy, he noted.
The minister referred to a decline in revenue activities, and the doubling of the burden of public expenditures to meet the inevitable obligations and basic needs of citizens as a result of rising prices of goods and services, impacted by an unprecedented inflationary wave sweeping the entire world.
The government achieved LE173 billion in primary surplus, he stated, compared to LE33 billion in the same period of the last fiscal year, while the debt-to-domestic product ratio declined and the budget deficit reached 5.8 percent as a result of the rise in interest rates.
Maait added that there are indicators that reflect an improvement in the outlook of investors in international markets for the Egyptian economy as the required return on Egyptian bonds in international markets witnessed a decrease of 50 percent, and the cost of insurance on these bonds decreased.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
