The role of economic planning in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) : The case of Egypt /
: دور التخطيط الاقتصادى فى تحقيق أهداف التنمية المستدامة / الحالة المصرية
by Shimaa Farag Mahgoub ; Supervised by Prof. Dr. Nagwa Samak.
- 170 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. + CD.
Thesis (Ph.D)-Cairo University, 2023.
Bibliography: pages 142-154.
In September 2015, 17 key objectives, 169 sub-goals and 229 linked indicators have been formed to address the well-being of individuals and communities. Countries worldwide have correspondingly committed to meeting the global goals by 2030: Sustainable Development Strategies (SDS) have been designed to support the transition to the new Agenda. With this shift, development objectives transformed from only promoting growth to broadly promoting the well-being. This is conducive to expanding the usage of the indicators approach in measuring development. On the other side, that transition has stimulated a holistic role of development planning to formulate national strategies and meet the global goals by 2030: bringing about together the multidimensional goals necessitate a prominent role of development to allow countries to design and implement their SDS and the resultant plans. Enhancing this role can help governments adequately craft interventions that guarantee inclusive and sustainable development (SD). In this regard, public investment has been regarded as a policy tool to promote sustainable and inclusive growth, eradicate poverty, and mitigate climate change. Besides, it has a potential role in overcoming the cyclical crises as a direct result of creating jobs and growth. Importantly, prioritizing this public investment is required, as a prerequisite, to delivering these ambitious impacts. According to this, this thesis aimed at providing an attempt to address the shortcomings of the literature by exploring the role of development planning, expressed by public investment, in improving the quality of people's lives through attaining SD in its different aspects. Specifically, the study aimed to examine the role of public investment’s influence in addition to some explanatory variables that expected to have an impact on the SD. Therefore, defining whether Egyptian development planning succeeded in attaining the desired economic structure was required to be addressed. Thereby, analyzing GDP, investment- specifically the public, and employment structure have been descriptively provided. Egypt’s performance regarding the SDG index and dashboard has also been also highlighted. From the quantitative point of view; thesis empirically examined the role of allocated public investment, Economic Growth, Financial Development and Openness (as explanatory variables) in promoting SD in Egypt throughout the period (1996-2021). Building on that, thesis is classified into four chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion and policy implications. Chapter one explored how development objectives and priorities have evolved overtime, on one hand, and how these evolutions have influenced and contributed to the changes that have occurred in the planning process, on the other. In addition, it showed how development measurement has correspondingly changed: moving from applying the level of income using GNP/GDP per capita to the efforts that have been made to construct the SDG index and other similar composite indices. Chapter two provided a comprehensive review of Egyptian development planning, with emphasis on the period preceding SD adoption before 2015, introducing a historical background to planning in Egypt since it was adopted as the main path to achieve development goals to date. A clear explanation of economic situation (1982/83 –2014/15) has been given to analyse Egypt’s socio-economic situation before the actual implementation of the SD plans, making it possible to judge the performance after the implementation of these plans in the following chapters. Furthermore, chapter three presented the adoption of the SDGs in Egypt including the government initiatives and tools to support the achievement of the goals. In addition to the analysis provided in the previous chapter, the socio-economic indicators, such as poverty and social equity, have be presented to involve the sustainability consideration. Egypt's performance regarding the SDG index and dashboard was comparatively introduced. The empirical estimation has been provided in chapter four to explore the relationship between SD and economic planning, expressed by public investment, and other selected variables which are regarded as affecting SD according to the literature reviewed, throughout the period (1996- 2021). In doing so, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) was employed to test the Co-integration relationship between SD and public investment and other control variables that are seen to affect SD in Egypt which are: public investment “PUI”, GDP growth “GDPGR”, trade openness “OP” and financial deepening “FD”. The Error Correction Model (ECM) will be further applied to explore the short-run relationship. Correspondingly, the study found that the planning process in Egypt has gradually shifted away from being top-down and expert-driven to citizens and procedural-based. Generally, it turned from the rational and comprehensive paradigm to a more communicative one, which has recently been known as the participatory approach. Moreover, the study showed that despite the planning efforts spanned over the decades that preceding the adoption of the SDGs to achieve the socio-economic targets, the economy and society still suffered from different distortions. Additionally, most people benefited little from the growth pattern even in the period of achieving high-income growth rates, which did not generate sufficient productive job opportunities for new entrants in the labour market and the business environment has not seen any marked improvement. As a result, the national strategy, Egypt Vision 2030, was launched in 2016 to deliver the SDGs by 2030. The strategy aimed at implementing a public-led massive investment to enhance people’s quality of life. The exact objectives and themes of the resultant SD plans assured that sustainability conditions are being established, which could be noticed from the planning efforts that have been made to confront the socio-economic challenges. On the other hand, the analysis revealed that the allocated public investment pattern was not conducive to achieve the desire economic structure. Additionally, implemented investment was not committed to the planned. In addition, the implemented investment were not allocated to the much more productive sector, instead services acquired the attention. In addition, technical planning models have not yet practically developed to provide more holistic, consolidated, and evidence-based policies. Finally, the long-run estimation pinpointed that that results showed that SD has been negatively affected by FD. Meanwhile, public investment & trade openness coefficients are significant with a positive sign, meaning that public investment and trade openness affect SD in Egypt. Furthermore, the short-run estimation showed that the trade openness & financial development in Egypt had a positive impact on SD. لقد حفز التحول العالمي نحو أهداف التنمية المستدامة الدور الشامل لتخطيط التنمية في صياغة الاستراتيجيات الوطنية وتحقيق الأهداف العالمية بحلول عام 2030. تم اعتبار الاستثمارات الضخمة - وخاصة الاستثمار العام - على أنه أداة تخطيط أساسية تعكس أولويات هذه الاستراتيجيات. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، أدى هذا التحول إلى توسيع نطاق استخدام معيار المؤشرات لقياس التنمية؛ و يعتبر صافي الادخار المعدل (ANS) بمثابة مؤشر مركب لقياس درجة التنمية المستدامة (SD) لبلد ما. وبناءً على ذلك، تهدف هذه الأطروحة إلى إجراء دراسة وصفية وقياسية لدور التخطيط الاقتصادي، تركيزًا علي الاستثمار العام كأداة لتخطيط السياسات، في تحقيق التنمية في مصر، واختبار العلاقات الطويلة والقصيرة المدى بين التنمية المستدامة. كمتغير تابع، والتخطيط الاقتصادي المعبر عنه بالاستثمار العام، من بين متغيرات التحكم الأخرى التي من المتوقع أن يكون لها تأثير على التنمية المستدامة في مصر، كمتغيرات تفسيرية خلال الفترة (1996-2021). ولتحقيق هذا الهدف، تم تطبيق نموذج الانحدار الذاتي بإبطاء موزع (ARDL) لاختبار علاقة التكامل المشترك بين التنمية المستدامة والاستثمار العام. علاوة على ذلك تم استخدام نموذج تصحيح الخطأ (ECM) لاستكشاف العلاقة فى المدى القصير. أظهرت نتائج الأجل الطويل أن التنمية المستدامة تتأثر سلبًا بـالعمق المالى. وفي الوقت نفسه، يؤثر كل من الاستثمار العام والانفتاح التجاري إيجابًا على التنمية المستدامة في مصر. علاوة على ذلك، أظهر التقدير للمدى القصير أن الانفتاح التجاري والعمق المالي كان لهما تأثيرًا إيجابيًا على التنمية المستدامة فى مصر. وبناءً على ذلك، يوصي البحث بصياغة حزمة سياسات مناسبة تهدف إلى تعظيم الاستفادة من الاستثمار العام من خلال التخطيط والتنفيذ الفعالين للاستثمار، بما يتماشى مع أهداف الاستدامة، إلى جانب إطار حوكمة قوي يؤدي في النهاية إلى تعزيز تأثير الاستثمار العام على التنمية المستدامة. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، توصي الدراسة أيضًا بتعزيز دور الانفتاح التجاري مع مراعاة الأنظمة البيئية وأطر السياسات للحفاظ على التأثير الإيجابي على التنمية المستدامة.
Text in English and abstract in Arabic & English.
Economics
Sustainable Development Economic Planning Adjusted Net Savings (ANS) ARDL ECM