Cairo, 26 August 2026 (ECA) - The ECA Office for North Africa concluded today, in partnership with the Egyptian Tax Authority, a capacity building workshop on taxing construction, real estate and industrial sectors.
The training took place in Cairo on 23-26 August 2026 for the benefit of senior tax officials, supervisors and auditors from large taxpayers’ centers in the cities of Alexandria and Hurghada, and medium taxpayers’ centers.
Participants acquired specialised technical knowledge and practical audit skills required to administer the taxation of the construction, real estate, manufacturing, transportation, and logistics sectors effectively.
This workshop is part of a series of trainings organized by ECA since 2022 in support to African countries.
"Africa today is currently facing one of the most difficult fiscal environments it has experienced in decades. From 2010 to 2023, public debt grew at nearly four times the rate of the continent’s economic output. These figures reflect an increasingly difficult fiscal reality confronting many African governments. In many countries, debt service has become one of the largest items of public expenditure, competing directly with spending on education, healthcare, infrastructure, social protection, and productive investment,” said Dr. Gamal Eltaib Ibrahim, chief of macroeconomic analysis and governance at ECA.
In such a context, the most sustainable, reliable, and sovereign source of development financing remains the resources that countries can mobilize domestically. In this regard, effective tax administration is one of the most important pillars of resilience as it can enable governments to maintain essential services, strengthen trust, and lay the foundations for long-term recovery and growth, he added.
Egypt, with a population of approximately 110 million, is the second-largest economy in Africa and one of the largest in the Middle East and North Africa. Its diversified economy spans manufacturing, petroleum and natural gas, construction, agriculture, tourism, logistics, information and communications technology (ICT), and Suez Canal-related activities, while the services sector accounts for the largest share of economic output.
In nominal terms, tax revenues in Egypt have increased considerably between 2017 and 2025, however, much of this growth reflects inflation, exchange-rate adjustments, and nominal economic expansion rather than structural improvements in revenue productivity. In the meantime, high public debt, rising debt-service obligations, and persistent external financing pressures have been constraining the country’s fiscal space, reinforcing the need to strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation as a cornerstone of sustainable fiscal policy, and therefore highlighting the need for a new phase of reforms that would extend beyond digitalisation and include stronger compliance management, more effective taxpayer segmentation, and enhanced audit capacity.
Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org