Egypt’s export has been projected to maintain its upward movement, with a boom in its tourism sector as well as rising increase in natural gas discoveries.
The International Monetary fund in its latest economic outlook for the Middle East region, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, predicts Egypt’s current account deficit to decline by 2% of GDP by 2020.
Tourism is crucial to Egypt’s economy. It generated revenues that increased 83.3 percent in the first quarter of 2018 to $2.2 billion. The sector, employed about 12% of Egypt’s workforce in 2010, about $12.5 billion in revenue, contributing more than 11% of GDP and 14.4% of foreign currency revenues.
IMF expects growth for oil importers to slow from 4.2 percent in 2018 to 3.6 percent this year, due to the slowing global economy and domestic factors but Egypt has been reported to continue to perform strongly while weak growth in Pakistan weighs on the region’s aggregate growth rate.