CAIRO, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's electricity and energy minister announced on Tuesday a new increase in electricity prices ranging from 17 to 30 percent based on consumption.
"The new prices will be applied on July 1, the first day of the fiscal year 2020-2021," Minister of Electricity and Energy Mohammed Shaker said in a press conference.
Egypt's fiscal year starts in early July and ends in late June.
"The new subsidized prices have been categorized on seven levels of consumption starting from 50-1,000 kilowatts," he said.
Consumption over 1,000 kilowatts wouldn't receive any subsidy, Shaker added.
He said that the country will bear 22 billion Egyptian pounds (1.36 billion U.S. dollars) for supporting the industrial sector in the coming five years.
The government has extended the plan to phase out electricity subsidies for another three years until 2014-2025 fiscal year, added the minister.
Egypt had announced last year that it was postponing the final lifting of electricity subsidies from the 2018-2019 fiscal year to the 2021-2022 fiscal year to ease burdens on the citizens.
The government raised electricity prices last year by 21 percent.
Suffering an economic crisis over the past few years due to political issues and security challenges, Egypt fully floated its local currency in 2016 as part of a three-year strict economic reform program that promoted some austerity measures that included lifting the subsidies and imposing more taxes.
The reform program has been encouraged and supported by a 12-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund. Enditem
