Social Protection as a Budget Priority

Abstract

Over the past decades, Social Protection (SP) has become a response engine to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which tackles poverty and vulnerability. The Agenda aims at guaranteeing the minimum floor for everyone including basic income, food security and access to health care services. Governments should be ensured that no one is left behind, through servicing the needs of everyone. Unfortunately, guaranteeing the minimum floor is far from reach for everyone in most of developing countries, including Egypt. Meanwhile, efforts around the world to redesign SP have revived the debate concerns the choice of social policy, specifically, whether the core principle behind distribution should be “universalism” or selectivity through “targeting”. In 1980s, many developing countries shifted away from universalism to targeting SP. As Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, it shook economies across the globe. The twin health and economic shocks revealed the gaps and fragmentations of national social protection systems upfront, primarily to those in the middle and at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. With the outbreak, they struggle for several reasons including working in informal sector and losing their jobs, trying to find ways to sustain their life as they need cash, and they need it now. Therefore, the pandemic instigated another violent wave of questioning between citizens, academics, policy makers and practitioners on the reliability of current modalities and forms of social protection systems and whether they provide minimum floors to fall back on during contingences which reinforces the pendulum back toward universalism. The pandemic has exacerbated the SP coverage gap in Egypt , including the missing middle and the fragmentation of SP system based on targeting have excluded them for any kind of provision. At the same time, the government of Egypt introduced Universal Health Insurance (UHI), also launched several initiatives; most importantly Haya Karima (Decent Life) to guarantee a decent life for everyone. This Chapter analyses the current state of SP system in Egypt and makes recommendations to better meet the needs of citizens. There are diverse ways to move toward inclusiveness through providing universal SP system that can give everyone a sense of security and fairness, introducing schemes to include the missing middles and poor who are currently falling through the cracks between narrow targeting and contributory social insurance schemes. Instead, the resources need to be mobilized and allocated to broad-based SP schemes. To make these SP systems adapted to specific context, this will require above all, inclusive national dialogue, and participation of all relevant stakeholders.