The ministries of planning, industry and investment, along with the CBE and Capmas will create a unified definition for the informal economy which will enable the government to produce an accurate estimate of its size, Capmas head Khairat Barakat said. They plan to organize a workshop that will aim at putting a precise definition that would help quantify the size of the informal economy and help set an economic consensus on its impact on GDP figures, Barakat said. Incorporating the informal economy into the formal economy has been a major goal of many past governments and administrations. The government and CBE’s financial inclusion and cashless society initiatives, in addition to the Finance Ministry’s anticipated SMEs Act, are all part of that goal. Egypt has been trying to get the informal economy to be factored by global institutions into their GDP calculations for the country.

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