A post on Al-Sisi’s official Facebook page has provoked mockery of social media activists
Al-Sisi’s Facebook page posted, “The public debt hiked from 700 billion to 3.4 trillion Egyptian pounds,”with hashtags (in Arabic)#Ask_thePresident and #BeCreative.
The comment posted on al-Sisi’s official Facebook page seemed praising the amount of public debt in Egypt as one of al-Sisi’s achievements!
In response, a wave of of mockery spread on social media; one said, “I am quite sure that the admin of the page is a genius.” Another one said, “I doubted for a second that a trillion is smaller than a billion.”
Al-Sisi’s comments came during the third National Youth Conference in in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya. Around 12,000 youth participated in the conference that lasted for three days.
It is worth to mention that since al-Sisi led a military coup in 2013 against Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president, Egypt underwent one of its harshest economic crises in the country’s history.
Al-Sisi, who made many promises to the Egyptians, and was viewed by some as a savior, has failed until now in resolving Egypt’s problems. On the contrary, he warned them of harsh times and austerity policies in light of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Loan.
Hard currency shortage has escalated due to withdrawal in tourism and foreign investment as a result political instability and lack of security.
As a result, the Egyptian government decided to take extreme measures to revive its wrecked economy.
Last November, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved Egypt’s request to secure $12 billion loan facility after Egypt met its requirements.
On August 30, Egypt started its first steps towards the loan when Egypt’s parliament approved a long-awaited law introducing a value-added tax (VAT) of 13 %, rising to 14% in the next fiscal year.
On November 3, the Central Bank of Egypt floated the Egyptian pound and gave up trying to peg the currency to the US dollar allowing it to devalue by almost half.
On November 4, Egypt took another unprecedented decision, which has always been abandoned by former leaders in fear of public unrest, to cut subsidies for fuel leading to jump in prices.
Moreover, the rates of annual inflation in Egypt’s cities have jumped to 30.9 % in March, hitting its highest inflation rates in 30 years.
