Addressing the Egyptian parliament’s Budget and Planning Committee Sunday morning, Egypt's Minister of Finance Mohamed Maeet said the newly-drafted Unified Tax Measures Law aims to facilitate the collection of a number of taxes; namely, income tax, value added tax, stamp tax, and the state’s financial resources development fee.
“This law is another financial reform step and also comes to stem tax duplication and pave the way for adopting the electronic collection of taxes and supervising sale and buying operations,” said Maeet, affirming that modern electronic techniques in tax collection will be implemented in the coming period and this will also help expedite the settlement of tax disputes.
Maeet warmly thanked MPs for giving support to the government when it embarked on Egypt’s economic reform programme in November 2016. "You helped us a lot, gave us all the necessary support and vowed to convince the people of the necessity of the economic reform programme, though its measures were radical, harsh and painful," said Maeet.
Maeet also told MPs that the joint cooperation of the government and parliament in implementing the economic reform programme helped save the country from facing "the Lebanese bankruptcy scenario".
“Now, when we hear the prime minister of Lebanon announce in a press conference yesterday that his country went bankrupt and that as a result it would suspend the payment of $1.2 billion in loans, we say thank God that we were able to save ourselves from this grim scenario," said Maeet.
According to Maeet, though Lebanon announced that it would embark soon upon an economic reform programme, the step comes too late.
"In light of this fact, the IMF refused to support Lebanon's economic reforms,” he added.
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