A senior Egyptian official revealed Monday that the goal of the government's next five-year development plan is to raise the people's living standards by 30 percent.

Minister of Economic Development Othman Mohamed Othman revealed the plan while speaking at a seminar on the country's economic performance hosted by the Journalists' Syndicate.

Othman told the seminar that the government in the sixth five- year development plan until 2011/2012 aims to increase the average annual income per capita to 13,000 Egyptian pounds (2,287 U.S. dollars).

Meanwhile, the government is expected to provide 3.8 million new job opportunities, decrease unemployment rates by 5 percentage points and improve the quality of basic services, such as health care, education, clear water and sanitary drainage.

Othman, however, noted that one of the main challenges that the government faces is to meet the needs of an overgrowing population through making the optimal use of the available limited resources and at the same time modernize the economy via changing the socioeconomic culture and strike a balance between economic competence requirements and the social dimension.

Talking about the favorable conditions to face the challenges, the official said that the Egyptian economy has started to regain strength over the past couple of years because of the sound economic, financial and monetary policies, with the inflation rates expected to reach 8 percent by the end of this year.

The investment opportunities in Egypt are growing, Othman said, adding that 2 billion dollars, which accounts for 40 percent of the total investments, has been put in oil ventures.

The volume of non-oil investments also amount to 3 billion dollars, accounting for nearly 55 percent of the investments, Othman said. (1 U.S. dollar = 5.6875 Egyptian Pound)

Source: Xinhua