Egypt's poverty rate surges to 27.8% in 2015

Egypt's poverty rate rose to 27.8 percent for the year 2015, compared to 25.2 percent in 2010-11, the state run statistics agency announced on Sunday.
In an official report released by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics on the international day to combat poverty, CAPMAS said "extreme poverty" reached 5.3 percent, which it attributes to a spike in prices of essential foodstuffs.

The current poverty line stands at an average 482 EGP (about $54) per month while the extreme poverty line stands at 322 EGP (about $36).

About 56.8% of those living in Upper Egypt's rural areas cannot meet their basic needs, compared to 19.7% in the Nile Delta's rural areas. This applies to roughly a third of people in Upper Egypt's urban areas.

According to the agency, Upper Egypt's urban and rural governorates as well as Nile Delta's rural areas witnessed an increase in poverty between 2012-13 and 2015, while urban governorates and Nile Delta's urban area witnessed a drop in the same period.

The report included recent statistics on state subsidies for foodstuffs, finding that 10.5 percent of subsidies are received by families in the poorest bracket; while subsidies decrease gradually to 4.2 percent for the richest bracket.