Egypt's new govt holds first meeting with focus on resolving power outage

Cairo: The ministers of Egypt's new government held their first cabinet meeting on Thursday with a focus on resolving the summer daily power cuts implemented by the government due to a fuel shortage.

The meeting, led by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly who has been in office since 2018, assigned the new ministers of electricity, petroleum, and finance to resolve the power outage issue as soon as possible.

"You are tasked from now to develop a permanent solution to this problem. We previously presented an exceptional solution for the current summer months, by pledging to provide about 1.2 billion U.S. dollars to finance the purchase of petroleum materials necessary to operate power plants," a cabinet statement quoted Madbouly as saying.

"We promised to provide a final solution by the end of the year, which requires taking all measures to ensure its fulfillment," said the Egyptian Prime Minister, according to Xinhua news agency.

On Wednesday, the new Egyptian cabinet was sworn in with a massive reshuffle including new ministers of defence, foreign affairs, justice, electricity, petroleum, finance, agriculture, civil aviation, and tourism and antiquities.

Last week, Madbouly said that the country could phase out the ongoing summer power cuts by the third week of July should the generation fuel shortage be resolved.

For a year, Egypt has been implementing daily load-shedding power cuts to ensure the safe operation of the grid and generation facilities.