Egypt has only begun to tackle subsidy problem, World Bank says

Egypt has “a long way to go” with an overhaul of its economy before it can regain the confidence of foreign investors, the World Bank’s chief economist for the region said.

Steps by the government in July to reduce energy subsidies were “tremendous,” Shantayanan Devarajan said in an interview in Cairo yesterday. “But keep in mind that the gasoline price in Cairo today is one quarter of the world price.”

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, a former army chief who was elected to the post a year after toppling his Islamist predecessor, has been struggling to revive an economy that has stagnated as the 2011 uprising was followed by years of often violent unrest. El-Sisi has already gone further with subsidy cuts than past Egyptian governments, which often debated such measures then shied away from taking them amid concern they would create public anger.