In 2025, the OECD conducted a review of budgeting in Egypt to identify strategic steps to strengthen the government’s public financial management (PFM) practices. This report presents the findings of that review.
The review concludes that Egypt has made significant and measurable progress in modernising its PFM arrangements. Key steps include creating a sound legislative basis for ongoing reform, a medium-term budget framework (MTBF), programme budgeting and a fiscal risk management function, and enhancing budget transparency. These reforms, which have been closely informed by OECD and international standards, reflect the government’s commitment to a more resilient and transparent fiscal framework that aligns with international best practice.
The review is structured around the stages of the budget cycle. This structure recognises that the quality of national budgeting depends on how individual tools function together – from setting fiscal objectives through to implementation and reporting. For each stage of the cycle, the review assesses existing practices against OECD experience and identifies opportunities to strengthen budgetary institutions and processes in a sequenced manner.
The review aligns its recommendations with the OECD Spending Better Framework, which sets out ten principles for sound budgetary governance, including clear fiscal objectives, realistic macro-economic assumptions, and robust oversight arrangements. The recommendations for Egypt are mapped against these principles to provide a reform pathway using the budget as a strategic tool to deliver better outcomes within limited fiscal space. The analysis also draws on recent work on Quality Budget Institutions to operationalise the Spending Better Framework.
Egypt’s PFM system has undergone significant reform since the adoption of the Public Financial Management Law (Law 6/2022 and Law 18/2024) and the General State Planning Law (Law 18/2022). Alongside digital investments, these reforms provide a modern foundation for fiscal discipline, better planning and more transparent use of public resources. Despite external and domestic shocks, Egypt has strengthened its primary balance, introduced a general government debt ceiling, and expanded the publication of budget information. The reform agenda is ambitious, with implementation at an early stage, but the trajectory is towards a more strategic, performance-oriented and transparent budgeting system.
Despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, Egypt has made notable progress in fiscal consolidation. A primary surplus of 3.5% of GDP in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024/2025 marked an historic high. The introduction of a general government debt ceiling and the commitment to bring central government debt to 72% by FY 2028/2029 are important steps toward institutionalising fiscal discipline. Revenue mobilisation, supported by strengthened tax administration, digitalisation and improved enforcement, and the rebranding of the Egyptian Tax Authority led to a 35.2% year-on-year increase in tax revenues in FY 2024/2025. Furthermore, the authorities contained public investment and other spending pressures to safeguard the primary balance.
In budget planning, Egypt has a MTBF covering FY 2025/2026 to FY 2027/2028. A technical co-ordination committee between the Ministry of Finance (MoF), the Ministry of Planning, Economic Development and International Co-operation (MOPEDIC), the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade and the Central Bank of Egypt, operationalised in October 2025, ensures macro-fiscal coherence. The Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP), first published in December 2025, provides strategic guidance for the annual budget within a framework of fiscal sustainability that aligns spending and revenue policies with national priorities. While the publication of the FSP provides a basis for budget negotiations with line ministries and the budget entities under their responsibility, expenditure baselines and top-down multi-year ceilings are not yet used to guide sectoral negotiations. Next steps should include ensuring regular updates and publication of the FSP at the start of each budget cycle (September), operationalising the MTBF Committee to monitor ceilings, strengthening scenario-based fiscal risk analysis over the medium-term, and institutionalising no-policy-change baselines.
Egypt has established the foundations for a performance-oriented budget system, with programme and performance budgeting (PPB) mandated for rollout by FY 2027/28. The next phase should focus on embedding PPB in resource allocation, institutionalising spending reviews, and aligning programme structures across the MoF and MOPEDIC, strengthening performance indicator quality and evaluation to ensure that programme information guides decision making.
The rollout of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) reduced central government bank accounts from around 61 000 in 2017 to fewer than 5 500 in 2020, enhancing cash management. The Government Financial Management Information System (GFMIS) provides real-time visibility for transactions across most budget entities and is being upgraded for multi-year estimates. A dedicated Macro-Fiscal Policy Unit has strengthened forecasting and scenario analysis, while a Fiscal Risk Department and a regularly published Fiscal Risk Statement are gradually improving the identification of risks, aligning practices with OECD standards.
Execution, control, and reporting have improved through the TSA, GFMIS and clearer in-year flexibility rules, alongside early steps to reinforce internal control and audit. Building on these foundations, priorities now include extending commitment controls to all accounts, standardising arrears reporting, fully deploying the debt management system, and scaling up internal audit to assist management in ensuring stable and well-controlled execution.
Egypt has strengthened fiscal transparency and enhanced citizen engagement, publishing a Citizens Budget, Transparency Briefs, and Tax Expenditure Reports. Egypt’s score of 49/100 on budget transparency and 35/100 on public participation in the 2023 Open Budget Survey, with a first-place ranking in the MENA region for participation, reflects progress in opening fiscal processes to the public. The Fiscal Transparency and Citizen Engagement Unit has piloted participatory budgeting in selected governorates, linking community priorities to budget allocations. Parliamentary scrutiny has advanced, with more structured engagement of sectoral committees in budget and final account discussions. Next steps could include further strengthening parliamentary budget oversight, potentially through a Parliamentary Budget Office, enhancing the analysis and use of the Mid-Year Review, formalising audit follow-up, and embedding key transparency requirements in legislation.
Overall, Egypt has demonstrated a strong commitment to modernising budgeting and improving public spending efficiency. Annex A summarises the assessment relative to the OECD’s Spending Better Framework. Looking ahead, sustained implementation and the institutionalisation of these reforms will be key to creating lasting improvements in fiscal resilience, enabling the government to deliver essential services within a sustainable fiscal framework.