News headlines in the past year have been increasingly dominated by the names of new coastal areas deemed eligible for sale, alongside state-owned companies and banks slated for privatization, in order to raise the funds needed to service debt and to meet the conditions set by lending institutions to obtain further loans. This comes at a time when new borrowing has become necessary merely to meet installment payments on earlier foreign-currency-denominated debts. By June 2025, Egypt’s external debt had reached 44.2% of GDP, up from no more than 15% in 2015—the year immediately preceding the unprecedented expansion of external borrowing. This policy has drawn Egypt into a vicious cycle of borrowing to buy time rather than address the structural problems afflicting the economy. As a result, the budget allocated to servicing debt obligations has ballooned, crowding out essential expenditures needed for economic development and improvements in living standards—items whose budgetary allocations have been shrinking year after year […]