President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi issued a number of directives on Tuesday to the finance ministry, most notably to raise the minimum wage to EGP 2,700 in the state budget for the fiscal year 2022/23, up from EGP 2,400, for public sector employees, the presidency announced.
In a meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait and other officials from the finance ministry, El-Sisi discussed a review of the draft state budget for fiscal year 2022/23.
The president also ordered granting employees covered by the civil service law a 7 percent periodical salary bonus, and granting employees not covered by the law a one-time bonus that is 13 percent of their basic salaries.
The president also ordered an increase to the additional incentive for both employees who are covered and those not covered by the civil service law at a total cost of EGP 18 billion
Last March, President El-Sisi ordered raising the minimum wage to EGP 2,400 from EGP 2,000, as well as raising pensions by 13 percent.
Egypt’s National Wage Council also announced in December that Egypt would mandate a minimum monthly wage of EGP 2,400 for the private sector with a monthly bonus worth 3 percent of the employee’s insurance.
During the meeting, El-Sisi also gave a directive to appoint 30,000 teachers annually for five years to meet the needs of the education sector.
In addition, the government is to pay the teachers an additional incentive to develop and improve their skills at a total cost of EGP 3.1 billion, the presidency added.
Egypt’s national educational system has been suffering from a shortage in qualified teachers, leading the Ministry of Education to hire part-time teachers paid for each class in the school year 2021/22 in all grades.
According to education ministry officials, there are currently 1.187 million teachers to over 24 million students in some 57,000 schools. Currently, the shortage of teachers is estimated at 320,000.
In exclusive statements to Al-Ahram Arabic website on Tuesday following El-Sisi’s meeting with the prime minister, Education Minister Tarek El-Shawky, who faced huge criticism from the public and from parliament over the decision to hire part-timers, praised the president’s directives.
Shawky revealed that the presidential directive came days after he held a meeting with PM Madbouly where they discussed the teacher shortage.
The president also ordered allocating a total of EGP 1.5 billion to finance an additional ‘quality incentive’ for faculty members and their assistants in universities and research centers.
President El-Sisi also ordered including dentists, physiotherapists and nurses to a previous decision to raise the monthly bonus for medical interns.
The finance minister presented during the meeting the most important objectives of the draft budget for the fiscal year 2022/23, including reducing the total deficit to about 6.3 percent of GDP, continuing to achieve a primary surplus of 1.5 percent of GDP, and achieve an increase in the wages in the budget to EGP 400 billion.
President El-Sisi was also briefed on the latest updates on upgrading and developing the tax system, where he issued orders to complete the mechanisation of the tax authority and the electronic invoice system before the end of the current fiscal year.
The president also reviewed with the PM and the finance minister the strategy to develop and upgrade the customs system and the most important programs and initiatives taken in this regard.
The president ordered taking into account all the international standards related to the quality of the goods imported to Egypt in this framework as well as to start working on pre-registration system at Egyptian airports.
Source: State Information Service Egypt