The Egyptian cabinet's media centre published on Monday an infograph showing Egypt’s growth rate at the top of regional countries, becoming one of the highest in the world despite the global growth slowdown.

Egypt’s growth rate recorded 5.7 percent, followed by Iraq with 4.3 percent, Israel with three percent and Kuwait with 2.6 percent, while Qatar recorded only 1.4 percent, according to the infograph.

Egypt’s growth rate improvement is due to the fiscal and economic reforms that it has adopted since 2016 and the growth in various sectors especially in tourism and manufacturing, in addition to the new natural gas discoveries and the improvement in commodities and services net exports.

The increase in private investments and the implementation of infrastructure projects contributed to the rise in growth rate, the cabinet’s media centre added.

The infograph showed that the global growth rate was anticipated to decline to 2.6 percent by the end of 2019, compared to three percent in 2018 and 3.2 percent in 2017, as the global trade and investment slowdown and global demand weakness are taking their toll on the global market.

Meanwhile, the infograph revealed that the World Bank expected Egypt to keep its economic growth rates at the current levels under the macroeconomic indices improvement.

It also showed that Egypt’s economic growth was expected to reach six percent in fiscal year (FY) 2020-21, driven by the continuing economic reforms, investment environment improvement, and private consumption, investment, and exports recovery.

Egypt’s inflation rate is expected to record 10 percent in FY 2020-21, and 11 percent in FY 2019-20, down from 13.9 percent in 2018-19, according to the World Bank data.

Unemployment rate decreased to 7.5 percent in the fourth quarter of FY 2018-19, down from 9.9 percent during the same quarter of FY 2017-18.

Regarding the financial and monetary policy, the infograph showed that Egypt’s budget deficit to the GDP ratio reached 8.3 percent in FY 2018-19 compared to 0.1 percent in FY 2017-18, while the government debt to the GDP ratio recorded 90.5 percent by the end of June 2019, compared to 97.3 percent during the same month in 2018.

Egypt’s foreign reserves recorded $44.97 billion by the end of August. The performance of the Egyptian pound recorded improvement against the dollar by 16 percent despite having reached the lowest level in mid-December 2016.

Egypt’s exports growth is projected to record 8.5 percent in FY 2020-21, and 6.5 percent in FY 2019-20, compared to 1.2 percent in FY 2018-19, while the foreign direct investments to the GDP ratio is expected to record 2.7 percent in FY 2020-21, and 2.3 percent in FY 2019-20, compared to 2.1 percent in FY 2018-19.