Sisi slashed food and fuel subsidies, raised fuel prices, raised taxes, slashed social spending, increased debt, accelerated privatization, facilitated land-grabbing by foreign investors, approved projects for multinationals which endanger the health and safety of the public while he banned any challenges to foreign investor activities; he doubled Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), took out loans to pay loans, is planning to implement a VAT tax to replace sales tax, is moving towards full privatization of the energy sector, handed Egypt’s food security over to foreign corporations, and the list goes on.
All of these measures are based upon directives from the IMF, and they represent textbook neoliberalism; the way to create an enslaved economy. There are local elites who will benefit from this enslavement of course, collaborators with the imperial masters, people like Mounir Fakhry, but they do not set the agenda. Eliminating them from the economy will have no real impact except to create more opportunities for multinationals to increase their market share and domination.
The strategy of targeting corporate power does not aim to collapse the economy. In fact, the unregulated activities of multinationals and foreign investors in a country are what brings about this sort of collapse. Neoliberalism is an economic weapon to destroy a nation’s sovereignty and independence; it is a method of occupation far more effective than military invasion. Not only is disruption of this system, by targeting the interests of the imperial masters, the only way to restore sovereignty and independence, it is also the only way to save the economy.