Egypt's president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi today defended the huge price hikes, saying tough economic decisions are required to protect the country from reaching the brink of bankruptcy.
Al Sisi, who took over as President last month, said during his meeting with editors-in-chief of national and private newspapers that Egypt is still facing interior and exterior challenges, reported Al-Bawaba news.
"What we live now is like a state of war and we have no choice but victory in order to be able to protect the coming generations and help Egypt to regain its regional and international role," Al-Bawaba news quoted the president as saying.
The hard economic decisions that were taken and those that will be taken are hard, but there is no other choice to protect the country from reaching the brink of bankruptcy, he said.
Al Sisi, the former army chief, asked the media to stand by his economic decisions and help in raising awareness among people.
On midnight Friday, the Egyptian government has raised the fuel prices by up to 78 per cent, without prior notice.
The decision, which raised the public outrage, came as an attempt to reduce the 240 billion Egyptian Pound (USD 33.5 billion) national budget deficit.
Today the President issued a decree, raising sales tax on cigarettes by 50 per cent and beer by 200 per cent.
Earlier, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab rejected public outrage against the 78 per cent fuel price hike and asked countrymen to accept the decision taken to tackle the mounting national budget deficit.
"This raise in prices is a hard way but Egypt should go through it, especially after debt accumulation," Mahlab said during a phone interview with 90 Minutes program on el-Mehwar TV channel.
The recently announced hike in the price of oil products following the removal of government subsidies could cause as much as a 200 per cent increase in all products due to a certain increase in transportation costs and a possible increase in productions costs, Consumer Protection Agency (CPA) head Zeinab Awad Allah told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper.
