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Mohamed Gad is a journalist who specializes in economic reporting at Al-Shorouk newspaper. He also contributes to the publications of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights.
Egypt: The Pandemic Experience in a Time of Reform
Egypt announced its first COVID-19 fatality on March 8, 2020, a few months after concluding a “reform” program supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan it had obtained in 2016. The pandemic thus posed the first test for the IMF-prescribed economic and social policies adopted by the Government of Egypt. As this article will show, whereas the reforms helped propel economic growth in a time of global recession, they did not provide a strong social safety net for vulnerable families during the crisis.
As voters headed for the polling stations in late May to elect a president for the second time since Hosni Mubarak’s 2011 ouster, the interim authority announced the state budget for the 2014 financial year. The budget included austerity measures that were sure to be painful for ordinary Egyptians, and the timing of the announcement suggests that the interim authority wanted to shield the new president from responsibility.
