Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) wrapped up its fifth annual conference on Monday, promising to push forward reforms to maintain economic growth and expand social justice in the populous Arab country in face of the current global financial crisis.
The NDP conference kicked off Saturday with a keynote speech given by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is also the chairman of the ruling party.
Attended by some 2,700 party members, the NDP conference reviewed the party's vision on various fields of Egypt's development, including social justice, fighting poverty, democracy, investment, employment, education, health care, food security, agricultural and urban development.
Addressing the NDP meeting, Mubarak said Egypt is facing two major challenges -- maintaining the economic growth rate and extending social justice, which are also the priorities of the party and the government.
The ruling party and the government will continue reforms "without delay," said Mubarak, noting the low-income people will be protected and that the middle class will be supported.
With the slogan "New Thought for Egypt's Future," the party conference opened amid concerns over the negative impact of the current global financial crisis on the Egyptian economy.
On Oct. 12, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazef said the ongoing global financial crisis could impact his country on three aspects, namely the banking sectors, the stock market and the growth rate of the economy.
Egyptian economy registered a 7.2 percent growth in the fiscal year of 2007-2008 (as of June 2008) and a 7.1 percent increase in the fiscal year of 2006-2007.
It is estimated that the current global financial turmoil may slow down Egypt's economic growth rate from more than 7 percent to6 percent.
Noting the world economy is facing recession, Mubarak said the Egyptian government has to take measures to preserve its high growth rates.
Mubarak voiced his confidence that the Egyptian banking system has the strength to ride out the financial crisis.
More than 30 billion Egyptian pounds (some 5.4 billion U.S. dollars) have been injected into the banking system in the past four years to protect the banks' credits, he said.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian stock market has been extremely volatile. On Oct. 7, the key index of the Egyptian stocks plummeted more than 16 percent and settled below 6,000 points, hitting a two-year low.
On early Monday, Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange's benchmark CASE 30 index, measuring the performance of the major shares, resumed a downward trend and stood at 4973.08 points.
In addition, Egyptian officials also worried about that the world economic recession would hit Egypt's tourism and the Suez Canal revenues, two of the major sources of the government revenues.
In a speech to the NDP conference on Sunday, Nazef said that Egypt, with its political stability and sound investment environment, is capable of taming the current economic challenges.
NDP Policies Secretary Gamal Mubarak, son of President Mubarak, said the party has always put social development and fighting poverty on top of its policy priorities.
According to the Egyptian MENA news agency, the NDP has decided to allocate 21.5 billion Egyptian pounds in the 2008-2009 fiscal year budget to boost ration commodities.
In addition, the party agreed to expend 2 billion Egyptian pounds on social security pensions and extend the social security network to 2.5 million families by 2011 in the country with a population of about 80 million.
President Mubarak, addressing the closing session of the NDP conference on Monday, said the party is determined to continue reforms in the country.
"We feel much stronger, more determined and more convinced that we are on the right track," Mubarak said. (1 U.S. dollar equals 5.56 Egyptian pounds)
Source:Xinhua
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