Egypt's prime minister told Reuters on Tuesday he aimed to get economic growth back above 7 percent a year within two years but this would depend on a recovery in foreign investment and other external factors.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif also told a Reuters Middle East Investment Summit that the government's growth target was about 5 percent for this financial year, which runs to the end of June 2010.
Other officials have suggested growth could exceed that level this year after slowing to 4.7 percent in 2008/09 as the world financial downturn hurt some of Egypt's main sources of revenues such as tourism and Suez Canal receipts.
"We need to get back to the level that we were growing at, 7 percent plus," Nazif said, referring to the level of growth reached before the financial crisis.
"Hopefully we can get back to those numbers in the next year or two," he said but added that much would depend on the country's ability to attract foreign direct investment.
"We can't grow to 7 percent depending on our own local, indigenous capacity alone. We need to be able to attract investments from abroad," he told Reuters.