Full employment: the challenge in the twenty-first century

There is a growing consensus in professional circles, as well as in the press, that Egypt’s potential for economic take-off has never been better (Ministry of Economy 1996: 9).1 The Government’s recent declarations also emphasize the need for a ‘great leap forward’. The economic stabilization programmes adopted in the early 1990s have achieved most of their objectives, and there has been a turn-around in growth performance, reversing the negative or stagnant growth rates which characterized the period from 1985 to 1992.