Egypt’s population officially reached 93 million on Monday evening, according to a statement from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) on Tuesday.

The new official population count brings the total number of Egyptians worldwide to 101 million, including 8 million living abroad.

In its statement, CAPMAS said that the population meter shows the number of Egyptians in Egypt at 93,044,937.

Of those, Cairo houses around 9,667,625 million, Giza 8,911,806 people, and Alexandria 5,027,786, it said.

In the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqiya the population now stands at 858,230, while North Sinai has 461,264 people.

The announcement by the public statistics body, comes only one day after Egypt's Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali described population growth in Egypt as an "actual catastrophe" that deserves to be fought against, just like the country's war against terrorism.

She made the comments during a Cairo seminar based around a new report by the United Nations Population Fund.

Egyptian officials have warned repeatedly of the steep rise in population, saying it hinders the country's development plans.

From 2006 to 2016, Egypt's population rose by 17.3 million, according to earlier statements by CAPMAS.

CAPMAS has said that the country's current population growth rate is five times that of developed countries and double the rate of other developing countries.

Source: Ahram online