Economy (Egypt)
===============


     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. As part of the 1987 agreement with the IMF, the
         government agreed to institute a reform program to reduce inflation, promote
         economic growth, and improve its external position. The reforms have been
         slow in coming, however, and the economy has been largely stagnant for the
         past four years. The addition of 1 million people every seven months to
         Egypt's population exerts enormous pressure on the 5% of the total land area
         available for agriculture.
     GDP:
         exchange rate conversion - $39.2 billion, per capita $720; real growth rate
         2% (1991 est.)
     Inflation rate (consumer prices):
         17% (1991 est.)
     Unemployment rate:
         15% (1991 est.)
     Budget:
         revenues $9.4 billion; expenditures $15.9 billion, including capital
         expenditures of $6 billion (FY90 est.)
     Exports:
         $4.5 billion (f.o.b., 1991 est.)
       commodities:
         crude oil and petroleum products, cotton yarn, raw cotton, textiles, metal
         products, chemicals
       partners:
         EC, Eastern Europe, US, Japan
     Imports:
         $11.7 billion (f.o.b., 1991 est.)
       commodities:
         machinery and equipment, foods, fertilizers, wood products, durable consumer
         goods, capital goods
       partners:
         EC, US, Japan, Eastern Europe
     External debt:
         $38 billion (December 1991 est.)
     Industrial production:
         growth rate 7.3% (FY89 est.); accounts for 18% of GDP
     Electricity:
         13,500,000 kW capacity; 45,000 million kWh produced, 820 kWh per capita
         (1991)
     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; livestock - cattle, water buffalo,
         sheep, and goats; annual fish catch about 140,000 metric tons
     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