Egypt's Finance Ministry said it hopes to amend the country's budget law to place special funds – long a source of controversy – under the same rules that govern public money, according to Ahram Online.
Special funds are raised by state institutions through other means than customs or taxes – hospital fees or parking tickets, for example – and are attached to a wide variety of public bodies.
They are not included in the state budget or subjected to parliamentary supervision.
There are more than 6,300 special funds in Egypt, worth a total of EGP27.275 billion ($3.8 billion), the finance ministry said in a press release on Thursday.
The ministry says that the new legal modifications will place all withdrawals from the funds, as well as their bids and tenders, under the same rules as other public funds.
Originally created by president Anwar Sadat as a way to give municipalities more autonomy and free up the central budget, the funds later become synonymous with corruption during the era of Hosni Mubarak.
Past governments have tried to reform the funds. In February 2012, former finance minster Momtaz El-Saeed called for the funds to be integrated into the state budget.