the International Monetary Fund, and other international and national organizations.
It has also benefited from discussions with several present and past Egyptian policymakers, politicians of every hue, bureaucrats, scholars and students, members of Egyptian and foreign think tanks and civil society, bankers, lawyers, journalists, diplomats from countries providing assistance to Egypt, and of course with former colleagues in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I am grateful for the candor and the detail with which they discussed their views, and for their unvarnished assessments of political and economic issues confronting Egypt and the country’s policy responses to them. Many of the insights are directly quoted in the text and have been referenced. However, this book is not a journalistic exposé and confidences have been respected; where identification might breach confidentiality, or the source requested anonymity, comments have been paraphrased without attribution.
The Egyptian economy faces a number of difficulties. The proportion of young people in the population is expanding rapidly and their expectations for the future are growing. These developments are taking place in an environment in which world economic growth has slowed, in which the benefits of economic integration and free trade are being called into question, and in a region in which threats of terrorism have added to political uncertainty. History has shown that on many crucial issues, economics and politics are inextricably intertwined. Overcoming the economic difficulties will call on all the skill and the wisdom that Egypt’s policymakers and citizens can muster, together with learning from the experience of successes and failures in the past. I hope this book can help in the task.
In a previous book on the Egyptian economy (Ikram 2006), I wrote that “anyone who works on Egypt will recognize how quickly he incurs debts that beggar his ability to repay them adequately.” The passage of time has only deepened my debt and increased my inability to discharge it. From prime ministers and cabinet members, through bureaucrats, academics, members of think tanks and civil society, politicians from all sides of the political spectrum, businessmen, journalists, and university students, numerous Egyptians have given liberally of their time to discuss economic and political events, no matter how sensitive. They all have helped to shape my thinking on economic issues and policymaking in Egypt. It is impossible to thank them all individually, but I must make an attempt to acknowledge those whose influence was the largest, even though several of them, sadly, are no longer among us.
My biggest intellectual debts concerning Egyptian economic development are to Robert Mabro, Hanaa Kheir el-Din, Heba Handoussa, Heba Nassar, Samir Radwan, Ahmed Galal, Galal Amin, Bent Hansen, Mahmoud Abdel Fadil, Adel Bishai, Gouda Abdel Khalek, Karima Korayem, Ragui Assaad, Nader Fergany, Heba el-Leithy, and John Waterbury.
Since this book is chiefly concerned with policy, the insights of policymakers, past and present, bulk large in the discussions; indeed, one might almost consider them as participants in its writing. I am grateful to many of them for so freely discussing the issues that they confronted and the reasons why they undertook the policies that they adopted, and also why they did not enact others. For the subject matter of this book, I learned much from Kamal al-Ganzoury, Abdel Moneim el-Kaissouni, Abdel Razzaq Abdel Meguid, Abdel Aziz Hegazi, Hilmi Abdel Rahman, Atef Ebeid, Ismail Sabri Abdullah, Hamed el-Sayeh, Salah Hamed, Zaki Shafei, Hazem el-Beblawi, Sultan Abu Ali, Zaafer al-Bishry, Osman Muhammad Osman, Ahmed Abou Ismail, Ahmed al-Dersh, Nabil Fahmy, Mahmoud Mohieldin, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, Wagih Shindy, Ismail Hassan, and Ali Negm.
A major part of Egypt’s economic strategy has rested on access to external aid, therefore it is vital to look at how bilateral donors and international agencies viewed Egypt’s policymaking. From the donor community, I profited especially from the knowledge and sagacity of Hermann Eilts, Edward Walker, Daniel Kurtzer, Alfred Atherton, Sir Nigel Barrington, Sir David Blatherwick, Don Brown, Toni Wagner, John Westley, Edward Peck, and Henry Mattox.
Colleagues and friends from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have over the years been generous with discussions, notes, advice, information, and data. I am particularly obliged to Kemal Dervis, Masood Ahmed, Martijn Paijmans, Vinod Dubey, Azizali Mohammed, Ismail Serageldin, Nemat (“Minouche”) Shafik, Arvind Subramanian, Daniela Gressani, Manuela Ferro, Inder Sud, Marcelo Giugale, Nadir Mohammed, Asad Alam, Christopher Jarvis, Paul Dickie, Matthew Simmonds, Lorenzo Forini, Yufei Cai, Nadeem ul Haque, and Farrukh Iqbal.
Archivists and librarians at the Joint IMF–World Bank library—especially Southamini Borlo, Becky West, Megan Sumner, and Sangeeta Sharma—were unfailingly helpful in providing a congenial environment for work, and procuring material that otherwise might have been impossible to obtain.
A number of scholars read the entire manuscript and provided important insights. I should like to express my gratitude to Ishac Diwan (Paris Sciences et Lettres), Tarek Selim (American University in Cairo), Ahmed Ghoneim (Cairo University and Center for Social and Economic Research, Warsaw), Ehtisham Ahmed (London School of Economics, University of Bonn, and Zhejiang University), Shahid Yusuf (George Washington University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University), and Zubair Iqbal (Middle East Institute, Washington DC). Constraints of time, commitments to other work, and the necessity of maintaining confidentiality, may have limited my ability to benefit fully from their advice, but my debt to them remains heavy.
I should like to express especial thanks to Nadia Naqib, my editor at the American University in Cairo Press. She suggested that I write this book, kept me in touch with sources in Egypt, supplied material that I was unable to locate in the United States, and responded to my queries with unfailing courtesy and promptness. I was also very fortunate in having Johanna Baboukis as my copyeditor, who went through the manuscript with a keen eye and sharp red pencil, paying meticulous attention to detail.
Over the years, many Egyptian friends have helped me to better understand, and greatly enjoy, Egyptian life, history, and culture. These friends are much too numerous to list in detail, but I would be especially remiss if I did not acknowledge Samir Koraiem, Wafik Hosni, Ismail Bedawy, Saad Barghout, Essam Rifaat, Hussein el-Gamal, Noorna (“Mickey”) Sarofim, Hisham Fahmy, and Omar Mohanna.
The underlying premise of this book is that a government must provide a better life for its citizens and protect the country from external pressures. These goals require policymaking that ensures the best use of a country’s resources, minimizes poverty, and maintains income disparities within socially acceptable bounds. My biggest intellectual debts are to Mahbub ul-Haq, who for many years in the Pakistan Planning Commission and the World Bank was my mentor in the formulation and analysis of policymaking in these areas; to Gustav Papanek, my thesis advisor at Harvard, who has counseled governments in Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, and elsewhere on guiding individual greed into socially useful channels; and to Amartya Sen, whose wide array of writings on removing poverty and enabling the enlargement of human capabilities (to cite some of his work in only the economic field) have been recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize, and who has been teacher and friend from my student days at Cambridge and Harvard.
I remain deepest in debt to my family, who have borne the brunt of my preoccupations and absences with an amazing amount of patience and understanding. As I said in an earlier book, “What may have helped them is their profound attachment to Egypt, which quite rivals my own.” Time has only strengthened our attachment. Shirin, Salima, Nicholas, Aden, Ana, Chase, and Cruz are a continuous font of love, joy, support, and inspiration.
My wife, Shirin, has been a particular source of strength. She never ceases to amaze me with how much she is able to accomplish. For more than fifty years she has maintained a family environment of cheerfulness and affection on three continents, while at the same time meeting the demanding requirements of a very successful legal career that spanned Pakistan, Egypt, and the United States. It is impossible to express the extent of what I owe to her, and this book is dedicated to Shirin as but
