Following Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri’s instruction to enforce a maximum wage in the public and government sectors that is 35 times the minimum wage, the Ministry of Finance has announced the decision will be applied from January 2012.

An official from ministry said the maximum wage would not be applied to the banking sector or petroleum companies at this time but may be taken into consideration in the future.

The decision will touch around 20 thousand people in leadership positions in the government’s administrative arm.

The battle for wage caps began in the Ministry of Industry and Trade after Mahmoud Issa, the minister, set a maximum salary for employees in organisations dependent on his ministry, such as the Industrial Modernisation Centre (IMC).

The government sector accounts for 23 per cent of the total labour force in Egypt, while the public sector accounts for 2.7 per cent of the labour force, according to research carried out by the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies.