oll bearing the name of the country
in Arabic) centered in the white band; similar to the flag of Yemen,
which has a plain white band; also similar to the flag of Syria that
has two green stars and to the flag of Iraq, which has three green
stars (plus an Arabic inscription) in a horizontal line centered in
the white band

Economy
-------

Economic overview: Half of Egypt's GDP originates in the public
sector, most industrial plants being owned by the government.
Overregulation holds back technical 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 enough
momentum to tackle the growing problem of unemployment. Egypt made
uneven progress in implementing the successor programs it signed
onto in late 1993 with the IMF and World Bank; currently it is
negotiating another successor program with the IMF. 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 63 million exerts
enormous pressure on the 5% of the land area available for
agriculture along the Nile.

GDP: purchasing power parity - $171 billion (1995 est.)

GDP real growth rate: 4% (1995 est.)

GDP per capita: $2,760 (1995 est.)

GDP composition by sector:
agriculture: NA%
industry: NA%
services: NA%

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 9.4% (yearend 1995)

Labor force: 16 million (1994 est.)
by occupation: government, public sector enterprises, and armed
forces 36%, agriculture 34%, privately owned service and
manufacturing enterprises 20% (1984)
note: shortage of skilled labor; 2.5 million Egyptians work a