<hdr>The World Factbook 1994: Egypt<nl>Economy</hdr><body>
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<item><hi format=bold>Overview:</hi> Egypt has one of the largest public sectors of all the Third World economies, most industrial plants being owned by the government. Overregulation holds back technical modernization and foreign investment. Even so, the economy grew rapidly during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but in 1986 the collapse of world oil prices and an increasingly heavy burden of debt servicing led Egypt to begin negotiations with the IMF for balance-of-payments support. Egypt's first IMF standby arrangement concluded in mid-1987 was suspended in early 1988 because of the government's failure to adopt promised reforms. Egypt signed a follow-on program with the IMF and also negotiated a structural adjustment loan with the World Bank in 1991. In 1991-93 the government made solid progress on administrative reforms such as liberalizing exchange and interest rates but resisted implementing major structural reforms like streamlining the public sector. As a result, the economy has not gained momentum and unemployment has become a growing problem. Egypt probably will continue making uneven progress in implementing the successor programs with the IMF and World Bank it signed onto in late 1993. In 1992-93 tourism plunged 20% or so because of sporadic attacks by Islamic extremists on tourist groups. President MUBARAK has cited population growth as the main cause of the country's economic troubles. The addition of about 1.4 million people a year to the already huge population of 60 million exerts enormous pressure on the 5% of the land area available for agriculture.
<item><hi format=bold>National product:</hi> GDP—purchasing power equivalent—$139 billion (1993 est.)
<item><hi format=bold>National product real growth rate:</hi> 0.3% (1993 est.)
<item><hi format=bold>National product per capita:</hi> $2,400 (1993 est.)
<item><hi format=bold>Agriculture:</hi> accounts for 20% of GDP and employs more than one-third of labor force; dependent on irrigation water from the Nile; world's sixth-largest cotton exporter; other crops produced include rice, corn, wheat, beans, fruit, vegetables; not self-sufficient in food for a rapidly expanding population; livestock—cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats; annual fish catch about 140,000 metric tons
<item><hi format=bold>Illicit drugs:</hi> a transit point for Southwest Asian and Southeast Asian heroin and opium moving to Europe and the US; popular transit stop for Nigerian couriers; large domestic consumption of hashish from Lebanon and Syria
<item><hi format=bold>Economic aid:</hi>
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<item>• <hi format=ital>recipient:</hi> US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $15.7 billion; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments (1970-88), $10.1 billion; OPEC bilateral aid (1979-89), $2.9 billion; Communist countries (1970-89), $2.4 billion
