Press Release
A Failed Government Remedies its Economic Problems for which it is the Disease
(Translated)

According to official data issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Finance, this week the Ministry borrowed around 21 billion pounds through local debt agencies, represented in bonds and treasury bonds with different time limits. Dr. Ali Lutfi, former Prime Minister, revealed in a statement days ago that "the Central Bank has committed the ugliest crime against the rights of the economy, when it printed 22 billion pounds, an issue that is considered disastrous to the national economy." And the Ministry of Finance had announced, on Sunday February 1st, that the overall local public debt had reached around 1.488 trillion pounds (215 billion dollars) last December. The Ministry added in a financial report that the total local public debt had reached %72.6 of the GDP last December. According to the same official report, the total foreign debt had reached 47.01 billion dollars by last September.

This leaves no room for doubt that the Egyptian economy is in a dire condition, and that the suffering of the people has reached an intolerable point, and that the solutions that the previous and subsequent government had put forth were the disease, and the malady lies in the capitalist economic system, which has conferred only poverty and want and backwardness. In the shade of this regressive economic situation this failure government has accepted the following:

1. Printing money: Islam has made it obligatory that the state currency be backed by gold and silver, which eliminates the root causes of inflation. The Messenger (saw) ordered the Muslims to adopt the gold dinar, weighing 4.25 grams, and the silver dirham, which weighs 2.975 grams, as the state currency. This is the reason the Khilafah "Caliphate" state enjoyed stable prices for more than a thousand years, and the return to the gold and silver standard is very practical and can be implemented. As for the state printing this huge amount of currency without any cover, this leads to a great increase in prices, and the decrease in the value of the pound, which amounts to wrongly stealing the efforts and money of the people.

2. Interest based borrowing: It may be that interest based borrowing, whether from states or international organizations, or internally through bonds or treasury bill, or even by encouraging the people to deposit their money in banks, is perhaps a direct factor of inflation, where the state resorts to printing currency to pay the interest of bank deposits, and from here the interest that the banks pay are an additional factor for the inflation and increase in prices, whose fire burns the poor class of society, whereas the wealthy become wealthier.

3. The domestic debt consuming 73% of the GDP: This government seeks to collect billions from the poor and middle classes through taxation, which is forbidden by the Shari', then using this money on debt servicing that consumes three fourths of the GDP under a corrupt capitalistic economic policy, and a political system that will not be purified of the greedy and corrupt who forfeited public wealth.

The cause of the economic situation that the country has reached is the capitalist system that is implemented on it, and we cannot correctly rise economically except through the implementation of the Islamic economic system, completely in the framework of the complete implementation of the Islamic system, without separating a part from it, in the framework of the Islamic state, which is the Khilafah "Caliphate" state, which is what was prescribed by the Lord of the worlds, and this is what we must all work for.

[وَمَنْ أَعْرَضَ عَنْ ذِكْرِي فَإِنَّ لَهُ مَعِيشَةً ضَنكاً وَنَحْشُرُهُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ أَعْمَى]

"And whoever turns away from My remembrance - indeed, he will have a depressed life, and We will gather him on the Day of Resurrection blind." [Ta Ha: 124]

Sharif Zayed

Head of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir

in Wilayah Egypt