Egypt promised tough action to restore growth on Sunday with a government programme that aimed to reduce the budget deficit, while protecting the poor as public anger mounts over a deteriorating economy. Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, reading out a 79-page policy agenda to Parliament, said his government would target 5 to 6% economic growth and push the budget deficit to below 10% by FY2017/18. "It is up to us to take several hard decisions that have long been delayed, (but) any economic steps will be accompanied by the requisite social protections," Ismail said. The programme promises to introduce a long-delayed Value Added Tax (VAT) and push ahead with reforms to the country's costly subsidies programme. It did not give specifics on how those changes would work. Egypt's Parliament will vote on whether to approve the government's policy agenda. No date has been set for the vote.   Our comment: The government’s presentation focused primarily on general policy targets over the medium-term, while not providing much information about next year’s fiscal targets and policy measures, likely leaving a more detailed presentation of FY2016/17 numbers for the budget statement. The latter is currently being revisited by the new Finance Minister who was sworn in last week. We still await details, in terms of timing and targeted rate, for the said-to-be-proposed value-added tax. The government also did not provide much detail about its plans for fuel subsidies, in light of recent comments on relaxing the initial five-year plan to phase out subsidies. We see an initial targeted deficit of 9.9% of GDP, as per a statement last week, being challenging in light of the recent hike in interest rates by the Central Bank, following an EGP devaluation and await further details of the budget statement to assess updated fiscal targets. (Reuters, Mohamed Abu Basha)