Obama said about Egypt: What’s a billion dollars between friends

Obama said about Egypt: What’s a billion dollars between friends

What’s a billion dollars between friends? President Obama is expected to slash that amount from the tab owed the United States by Egypt in a highly anticipated speech on Mideast and North African relations Thursday. The speech is meant to provide tangible support to the new democracies in the region, and will be broadcast live around the world in Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew. “We see this as a critical window of time for the United States to take concrete action,” a top administration official said Wednesday. The $1 billion for Egypt will provide “cash flow relief,” the official said, and will be buttressed by another $1 billion loan to help boost infrastructure and jobs.

Egypt is seeking up to $4-billion (U.S.) from the International Monetary Fund to help plug the huge hole in its public finances that opened up as a result of the economic disarray following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the former president ousted in February. 

Samir Radwan, the Minister of Finance, told the Financial Times his country needed up to $12-billion in budget support until the end of the next fiscal year in June, 2012. The deficit, he said, will be “anywhere between 9 and 10 per cent of gross domestic product” in the next fiscal year. 

Radwan said the shortfall in public finances was the result of a sharp decline in tourism, exports and remittances from Egyptians abroad, coupled with rising demands for wage increases coming mainly from the state sector, which employs around six million people.

Soure

And