According to a new Reuter’s poll, Egypt's economy will grow 5.0% in the current fiscal year, to end in June 2022, continuing the sentiment from a survey from 3 months ago.

The participants’ expectations are slightly below the government’s own target of 5.4%.

The poll, taken between July 5-26, states that Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP) could grow 5.5% in the upcoming fiscal year (ending in June 2023).

On state-side, the government has previously states it expected the economy to grow 2.8% in the 2020/2021 fiscal year, despite the on-going pandemic’s disruption of the global economy.

Egypt maintains its position as one of the only emerging markets to achieve GDP growth despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

The economy saw heavy repercussions from the pandemic, including the collapse of the tourism sector in March 2020 and other parts of the economy.

Egypt maintained a large trade deficit that climbed to 9% at the end of March 2021, reaching $30.6 billion.

On the trade deficit, Allen Sandeep of Naeem Brokerage said Egypt's high trade deficit was partly a result of lower tourism revenues.

"The hope is that non-oil foreign direct investment picks up, local industry, local manufacturing takes over, and then you have substitution for imports," he said.

Egypt’ trade deficit decreased last April, declining 13.3% to reach $3.1 billion compared to April 2020’s $3.5 billion, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) in early July.