Funding Egypt’s megaprojects is vital after decades of neglect, El Sisi says

Egypt’s president has defended his government’s spending priorities against persistent criticism, saying the multibilliondollar megaprojects launched since he took office have created millions of jobs.

Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who took office in 2014, has told Egyptians that the major infrastructure upgrades, construction of cities, power generation and reclamation of hundreds of thousands of hectares of desert were necessitated by decades of inaction or negligence by previous governments.

He said the moves were vital to accommodate Egypt’s population growth and the million people who entered the workforce each year.

“We are paying the price now for every measure we had not taken in the past or the things the state had not paid attention to, not just over the past 10 or 20 years, but rather over the past 40 to 50 years,” he said.

In his comments, released on Saturday, Mr El Sisi sought to refute criticism that priority should have been given to education, a sector he has acknowledged to be in desperate need of reform and investment.

“Giving priority to education is a very important matter, but we could not have devoted the state’s resources over 15 years to education alone, despite its importance,” he said at a ceremony marking the partial opening of an agricultural project west of Cairo.

“People would not have been able to put up with the absence of services and weakness of infrastructure such as electricity, roads and food production projects.”

Since taking office nearly eight years ago, Mr El Sisi has made the economy a priority.

He has spent billions of dollars on a drive to modernise the country.

In 2016, he brought in far-reaching reforms that included new taxes and the removal of state subsidies on utilities, fuel and various services. He has also devalued the local currency by nearly 50 per cent against the US dollar.

The reforms led to price rises that hit the middle and working class hardest, but won praise from bilateral donors and international financial agencies.

Mr El Sisi has credited those reforms for Egypt’s economic resilience amid the pandemic.

He said he was hopeful that the economy would weather the effects of the Ukraine war, which he recently described as an “unprecedented crisis”.

“People are wondering why we are spending all this money, especially that we are talking about spending 200,000 to 250,000 pounds on the reclamation of each acre of land,” he said. The population of Egypt had increased by 20 million in the past 10 years, he said.

“How much is their demand for basic commodities? And does the GDP satisfy them?” he said.

“We are not just talking about the population growth, but rather the state’s plans to satisfy the people’s demands. Consequently, we have no choice but to embark on national projects.”

Egypt hopes to add 10.1 million hectares to its existing farmland, which is mostly on the banks of the Nile.

The addition, in areas such as southern and middle Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula, is equal to 25 per cent of Egypt’s entire agricultural land.