CAIRO (Middle East Eye/MEMO) – Egypt is in need of an immediate financial assistance plan to avoid the risk of total collapse, a prominent Egyptian journalist has written in an article for Lebanese news website Asas Media.
Emad El Din Adeeb urged Persian Gulf countries to provide financial aid to Cairo before a likely “return to what the country witnessed in 2011,” referring to the mass protest movement that overthrew long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt needs $25bn to compensate for additional costs occurred as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, which has hit Cairo hard due to its dependence on wheat imports from the warring sides.
“The Egyptian economy may withstand until the last quarter of 2022, after that, Egypt will be in front of two possibilities,” Adeeb wrote.
The scenario, he added, is that “fresh dollars may be secured to revive the Egyptian economy to face this growing bill through an Arab and international support project.
“The second possibility is the exacerbation of the crisis and the high pressure on Egypt’s political and social stability. This scenario is catastrophic because it opens the doors of hell not only to the situation in Egypt but to the whole region.”
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on Friday called to reach an “international solution” to the global grain crisis.
This came in a video speech in which Sisi addressed the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia, the 25th session that began on Wednesday. Egypt is considered a “guest country” in the forum.
Sisi said, “Egypt appreciates its historical friendship with Russia.”
He added, “This year’s forum is being held under unprecedented political and economic conditions and challenges, and we hope that the forum’s outputs will contribute to finding effective solutions to mitigate the global economic crisis and its negative repercussions.”
Sisi stressed that addressing this crisis requires an international effort and cooperation from all parties “to restore normalcy, especially maritime traffic and the regularity of supply chains, especially foodstuffs, such as grains and vegetable oils.”