Overview: 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 1991-92 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. In 1992-93 tourism has 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.

National product: GDP - exchange rate conversion - $41.2 billion (1992 est.)

National product real growth rate: 2.1% (1992 est.)

National product per capita: $730 (1992 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 21% (1992 est.)

Unemployment rate: 20% (1992 est.)

Budget: revenues $12.6 billion; expenditures $15.2 billion, including capital expenditures of $4 billion (FY92 est.)

External debt: $38 billion (December 1991 est.)

Industrial production: growth rate 7.3% (FY89 est.); accounts for 18% of GDP

Electricity: 14,175,000 kW capacity; 47,000 million kWh produced, 830 kWh per capita (1992)

Industries: textiles, food processing, tourism, chemicals, petroleum, construction, cement, metals

Agriculture: 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

Illicit drugs: a transit point for Southwest Asian heroin and opium moving to Europe and the US; popular transit stop for Nigerian couriers; large domestic consumption of hashish and heroin from Lebanon and Syria

Economic aid: 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

Currency: 1 Egyptian pound (#E)=100 piasters

Exchange rates: Egyptian pounds (#E) per US$1 - 3.345 (November 1992), 2.7072 (1990), 2.5171 (1989), 2.2233 (1988), 1.5183 (1987)

Fiscal year: 1 July-30 June