On Monday, the World Bank issued a report on the financial situation in Egypt, documenting the continued rise in debt instalments, expecting that Egypt will pay about $42.3 billion in the next fiscal year in the form of external debt instalments and services.

The report, which provided a detailed analysis of Egypt’s general financial situation, addressed education as an essential and indispensable condition for human capital, stressing that allocating financial resources to priority sectors, such as education, is crucial.

The funds allocated for education in the general budget for the fiscal year 2022/2023 amounted to about 131 billion pounds, while it was 117 billion pounds in the fiscal year 2021/2022 and 109 billion pounds in the fiscal year 2020/2021. Although the funds allocated to education have increased in public budgets in the past few years, they are declining compared to the country’s GDP. The report revealed a decrease in the percentage of spending on education from 2.8% in 2015/2016 budget to 2% in the current budget. The Egyptian constitution obliges the government to allocate at least 4% of the GDP to education.

The World Bank stressed that the Egyptian government’s efforts over the past few years have not translated into better education spending. The Learning Poverty report issued by the World Bank in 2019 found that about 70% of ten-year-olds cannot read and understand a simple sentence. Government debt in the 2021/2022 fiscal year increased to 88.3% of GDP, compared to 87.9% in the previous fiscal year.