Egypt’s cabinet reshuffle shows resolution to tackle future challenges

A significant reshuffle took place in the new Egyptian government with the change of several key ministers, as the country pushes ahead with tough economic reforms and seeks to improve the security situation.

Egypt’s new cabinet was sworn in on Thursday with 12 new ministers, including the security and economic ministers, signaling the country’s resolution to tackle a series of challenges, according to experts.

“Reshuffling the government indicates the country’s willingness to resume its economic program by pumping new blood for improving the performance,” Waleed Gaballah, professor of financial and economic jurisdiction at Cairo University, told Xinhua.

The major reshuffle included three new faces in the economic group: the ministers of finance, trade and industry, and public enterprise.

Mohamed Ma’it, former deputy finance minister in the outgoing cabinet, was promoted to minister, replacing Amr el-Garhy, who oversaw the recent economic reform and austerity measures that helped secure Egypt’s $12-billion IMF loan.

“Ma’it has very good experience in drafting economic laws and will further boost the economic reform plans and austerity measures taken by his predecessor,” Gaballah said.

He also believes that “naming a new trade and industry minister was important because the business sector has faced tremendous problems, since the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, when thousands of factories were closed.”

The economic department will face a number of major challenges, including finishing the national projects so the citizens could benefit from its revenues, fulfilling the economic reform procedures and expanding the development projects to less-developed areas like Upper Egypt.

Egypt has been experiencing deflation, rising unemployment and increasing foreign debt, while the government attempted to expand the investment and increase the gross volume of economy to boost employment. On June 5, the Egyptian parliament approved a very ambitious budget for the 2018-19 fiscal year, the biggest in the country’s history.

Valued at a total of 1.412 trillion Egyptian pounds (nearly $80 billion), the new budget aimed to decrease the state’s budget deficit to 8.4 percent of the GDP, as well as achieving a primary surplus.

Mokhtar al-Sherief, economics professor with Mansoura University, praised new Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly, who also retained his post as housing minister, due to his successful role in creating a large number of jobs and increasing the liquidity of the country’s foreign reserves that had been previously misused.

He added that “keeping the housing, investment and planning ministers will send a message of assurance to the foreign investors that their projects will be implemented without delays or drastic changes.”

Egypt’s fight against militants in Sinai continued in 2018, as the army launched another massive operation in February amid increasing attacks on churches, mosques and civilians. The new government chose General Mohamed Zaki, who led the republican guard since August 2012, as the new defense minister in place of Sedqi Sobhi.

Mahmoud Tawfik, head of the national security department since October 2017, was chosen to succeed Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar as the new interior minister.

“Since President Sisi took office in 2014, he adopted a new approach of not keeping the security officials long in their posts, as happened before when he changed the head of intelligence and the army chief of staff,” said Khalid Okasha, military expert and member of the National Council for Combating Terrorism.

Egypt is experiencing unprecedented security concerns due to domestic and regional challenges, on top of which is terrorism.

Besides the ordinary crimes and terrorism threat in Sinai, “Egypt still suffers from security problems on the borders with Libya in the west and Sudan in the south, where weapons trafficking and extremists’ infiltration are difficult to contain,” Okasha told Xinhua.

He said both new security ministers will have to strive to uproot terrorism as security is most important for stability and development.