Egypt's finance minister says petroleum subsidies to be slashed

[April 09, 2016]  CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will slash petroleum subsidies by nearly 43 percent in the 2016-2017 budget, Finance Minister Amr al-Garhy told a news conference on Saturday.

The country will lower subsidies to 35 billion Egyptian pounds ($3.94 billion) from around 61 billion pounds in 2015/16, he said.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi approved on March 31 a draft state budget which reduces the deficit in fiscal year 2016-17 to 9.8 percent of gross domestic product from the current 11.5 percent.

(Reporting by Ehab Farouk; Writing by Asma Alsharif; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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