Glass blowers
Courtesy Embassy of Egypt, Washington

Worker with textile machine
Courtesy Embassy of Egypt, Washington

The industrial sector, which included energy, mining, and manufacturing, constituted the backbone of the Egyptian economy in the early 1990s. Whereas its share of GDP did not exceed 15 percent in 1952, it stood at more than 33 percent of GDP throughout the 1980s. The sector, however, did not perform as well in other respects, especially in creation of employment. In 1986 it absorbed less than 2 million persons out of a total workforce of more than 12 million. The sector faced many problems that hampered its growth. Reform was required in many policy areas within and outside industry if the sector were to lift Egypt from dependence on raw material exports and other exogenous resources that supplied the major portion of foreign currency (see Balance of Payments and Main Sources of Foreign Exchange , this ch.).

Data as of December 1990