ABSTRACT
This chapter presents art overview of Egypt's 1991 economic reform and structural adjustment programme and the economic reforms initiated in agriculture in 1986. It examines these reforms in the context of the prevailing understanding of Egypt's problems as described by the Government of Egypt and the International financial institutions. The chapter highlights what has become a consensus in Egypt, and within the international agencies and the academic community, regarding the policy measures thought necessary to resolve the characterisation of the country's agricultural crisis. It discusses the need to understand the rationale underpinning an extensive range of policy suggestions for agricultural reform before assessing the outcome of the reform measures in terms of the broad aggregate of economic data used by most commentators. Agricultural liberalisation began in 1986, five years ahead of the economic reform programme of 1991. Economic reform in agriculture is intended to redress a record of poor growth.
