imilar 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

@Egypt, Economy

Overview:
Egypt has one of the largest public sectors of all the Third World
economies, 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 momentum and
unemployment has become a growing problem. Egypt probably will
continue making uneven progress in implementing the successor programs
with the IMF and World Bank it signed onto in late 1993. In 1992-93
tourism plunged 20% or so because of sporadic attacks by Islamic
extremists on tourist groups. President MUBARAK has cited population
growth as the main cause of the country's economic troubles. The
addition of about 1.4 million people a year to the already huge
population of 60 million exerts enormous pressure on the 5% of the
land area available for agriculture.
National product:
GDP - purchasing power equivalent - $139 billion (1993 est.)
National product real growth rate:
0.3% (1993 est.)
National product per capita:
$2,400 (1993 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):
11% (1993 est.)
Unemployment rate:
20% (1993 est.)
Budget:
revenues:
$16.8 billion
expenditures:
$19.4 billion, including capital expenditures of $3.4 billion (FY94
est.)
Exports:
$3.5 billion (f.o.b., FY93 est.)
commodities:
crude oil and petroleum products, cotton yarn, raw cotton, textiles,
metal products, chemicals
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