Egypt is riding high. Economic growth in the last fiscal year that ended on June 30 reached 7.1%, the highest level in more than two decades. This pace has prompted Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali to inform International Monetary Fund officials in October that Egypt could reach a growth rate of as much as 9% in a year, according to a finance ministry statement. The International Finance Corp, the World Bank’s financing arm, set the record straight and declared Egypt the world’s top reformer this year, eliciting cheers from the Egyptian authorities who faulted the IFC’s last year assessment of the North African country’s business climate. As a top reformer, Egypt cut the minimum time required to start a business, lowered fees for registering property and relaxed bureaucracy for construction permits among other measures, according to IFC’s 2008 Doing Business report released in October. The report, the fifth in a row,
