"We are aiming for 4.5 (percent), probably given the developments we are seeing in the domestic economy, and the development we are seeing abroad, we will be closer to 5 (percent). But our formal target is 4.5," Youssef Boutros-Ghali told reporters on Sunday.

Boutros-Ghali said that he was targeting a budget deficit of 8.5 percent of GDP in the 2009/10 fiscal year, according to a Reuters report. He added that he aims for Egypt's budget deficit to decline to 3 percent by 2015, three years later than previous forecast.

"We will get to a path that brings down the budget deficit to around 3 percent by say, 2015. Two, three years delay." Egypt's economy grew at around an annualised 4.7 percent in the third quarter of the 2008/2009 (July/June) fiscal year, the finance ministry has said.

The figure compared with 4.2 percent in the second quarter of the same fiscal year, and suggested that most sectors of the country's economy had resumed growing in spite of the global downturn, according to a finance ministry report cited by state news agency MENA on Saturday.

"We decided to accommodate the contraction in revenue and not contract expenditures with them. I am more concerned with growth, than domestic debt-to-GDP or budget deficits," Boutros-Ghali said.