Flag: three equal horizontal bands of red (top), white, and black
with the national emblem (a shield superimposed on a golden eagle
facing the hoist side above a scroll bearing the name of the country
in Arabic) centered in the white band; similar to the flag of Yemen,
which has a plain white band; also similar to the flag of Syria that
has two green stars and to the flag of Iraq, which has three green
stars (plus an Arabic inscription) in a horizontal line centered in
the white band
Economy ———-
Economic overview: Half of Egypt's GDP originates in the public sector, most industrial plants being owned by the government. Overregulation holds back technical modernization and foreign investment. Even so, the economy grew rapidly during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but in 1986 the collapse of world oil prices and an increasingly heavy burden of debt servicing led Egypt to begin negotiations with the IMF for balance-of-payments support. Egypt's first IMF standby arrangement, concluded in mid-1987, was suspended in early 1988 because of the government's failure to adopt promised reforms. Egypt signed a follow-on program with the IMF and also negotiated a structural adjustment loan with the World Bank in 1991. In 1991-93 the government made solid progress on administrative reforms such as liberalizing exchange and interest rates, but resisted implementing major structural reforms like streamlining the public sector. As a result, the economy has not gained enough momentum to tackle the growing problem of unemployment. Egypt made uneven progress in implementing the successor programs it signed onto in late 1993 with the IMF and World Bank; currently it is negotiating another successor program with the IMF. President MUBARAK has cited population growth as the main cause of the country's economic troubles. The addition of about 1.2 million people a year to the already huge population of 63 million exerts enormous pressure on the 5% of the land area available for agriculture along the Nile.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $171 billion (1995 est.)
GDP real growth rate: 4% (1995 est.)
GDP per capita: $2,760 (1995 est.)
GDP composition by sector: agriculture: NA% industry: NA% services: NA%
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 9.4% (yearend 1995)
Labor force: 16 million (1994 est.) by occupation: government, public sector enterprises, and armed forces 36%, agriculture 34%, privately owned service and manufacturing enterprises 20% (1984) note: shortage of skilled labor; 2.5 million Egyptians work abroad, mostly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states (1993 est.)
Unemployment rate: 20% (1995 est.)