al 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. Tourism has plunged since 1992 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 1.2 million people a year to the
already huge population of 62 million exerts enormous pressure on the
5% of the land area available for agriculture along the Nile.

National product: GDP - purchasing power parity - $151.5 billion (1994
est.)

National product real growth rate: 1.5% (1994 est.)

National product per capita: $2,490 (1994 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 8% (1994 est.)

Unemployment rate: 20% (1994 est.)

Budget:
revenues: $18 billion
expenditures: $19.4 billion, including capital expenditures of $3.8
billion (FY94/95 est.)

Exports: $3.1 billion (f.o.b., FY93/94 est.)
commodities: crude oil and petroleum products, cotton yarn, raw
cotton, textiles, metal products, chemicals
partners: EU, US, Japan

Imports: $11.2 billion (c.i.f., FY93/94 est.)
commodities: machinery and equipment, foods, fertilizers, wood
products, durable consumer goods, capital goods
partners: EU, US, Japan

External debt: $31.2 billion (December 1994 est.)

Industrial production: growth rate 2.7% (FY92/93 est.)

Electricity:
capacity: 11,830,000 kW
production: 44.5 billion kWh
consumption per capita: 695 kWh (1993)

Industries: textiles, food proces