CAIRO, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) hailed on Tuesday the "swift measures" taken by Egypt to deal with the impacts of the COVID-19.
"Egypt has allocated 6.13 billion U.S. dollars until June for responding to the deteriorations of the pandemic," IMF's research paper on Social Spending in the Middle East and Central Asia said.
It said that the Egyptian government has spent 528 million dollars for boosting the health care sector by providing immediate medical supplies and paying allowances for the workers in the health ministry's front lines.
At the economic level, the IMF paper said Egypt paid monthly 31.7 dollars over three months for the informal seasonal workers whose unstable income almost vanished.
It added that the government has raised the pension wages by 14 percent and increased the cash transactions for the neediest families.
According to the finance ministry statement in August, the government has spent 65 billion Egyptian pounds (nearly 4.12 billion dollars) out of 100 billion pounds, a fund that was ordered by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to control the spread of the virus. Enditem
