Egypt expects 5.2% GDP growth in 2025-26

• Projected GDP increase above target
• Suez Canal and tourism driving growth
• Hotels and restaurants perform strongly

Egypt expects its economy to expand 5.2 percent in the current 2025-26 fiscal year, above the targeted increase.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the third-largest Arab economy rose nearly 5.3 percent in the second quarter of the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30, minister of planning and economic development Ahmed Rostom said.

Q2’s growth was the highest since the third quarter of the 2021-22 fiscal year, he told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“Egypt’s GDP is projected to grow by 5.2 percent in the 2025-26 fiscal year… this is around 0.7 percentage point higher than the targeted growth of 4.5 percent for this period,” Rostom said in a statement published on the cabinet’s website.

The Suez Canal and tourism mainly drove growth in the October-December quarter, he said.

The canal’s revenues spiked nearly 24 percent, while increases of 14.6 percent occurred in hotels and restaurants, 9.6 percent in non-oil industries and between 3.3 percent and 7.1 percent in trade, electricity, education and health.

The surge in hotels and restaurants resulted from a sharp increase in the number of tourists to a record-high 19 million during 2025, Rostom said.

“The contraction in the oil sector is also slowing thanks to an upswing in drilling and exploration operations,” he said, without mentioning the rate of decline.

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Egypt, the most populous Arab country, has been undertaking reforms at the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund to spur its economy, with a focus on privatisation, investments and exports.

Rania Al-Mashat, then minister of planning, economic development and international cooperation, said last year that Egypt’s policy of relying more on the private sector was paying off, with non-government investment up 24 percent in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

The ratio of private investment to total capital that year surged to its highest in five years at 47 percent, overtaking public capital at 43 percent, she said.

From around EGP474 billion ($9.6 billion) during the 2023-24 fiscal year, private investment shot up to nearly EGP590 billion in 2024-25, her figures showed.

Public investment shrank from around EGP627 billion to EGP526 billion in the same period.