Egypt on Tuesday announced new cuts to its electricity subsidies, raising prices by an average of 26 percent for the 2018-2019 fiscal year beginning in July.

Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker said electricity costs for factories would rise by about 41.8 percent and for households by 20.9 percent.

Egypt has committed to deep cuts to energy subsidies as part of a three-year, $12 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan program it began in late 2016.

The government has said its electricity subsidies will be phased out completely by the end of the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Earlier this month, Egyptian authorities hiked prices of piped drinking water by up to 45 percent.

The IMF has praised Egypt's tough fiscal reforms, which included a currency float in late 2016. The Egyptian pound lost half its value after the float, reducing many Egyptians' spending power. Prices have sharply skyrocketed as a result of measures, hard-hitting poor and middle-class people in the Arab country.

The move came days after Jordan's Prime Minister Hani Mulki resigned over weeklong mass protests against proposed austerity measures and tax hikes to recover the economy of the cash-stripped kingdom, which also sought financial aid from the IMF and other international creditors.

Economists see some grounds for hope in reviving the economy, which was hit by years of unrest that followed a 2011 popular uprising that ousted autocratic President Hosni Mubarak. Two years later, democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi was toppled by the military in coup that installed then Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to power, who was elected to presidency in 2014 and 2018.

Egypt's GDP growth for the third quarter of the 2017-2018 fiscal year rose to 5.4 percent from 4.3 percent in the same period a year earlier, the planning ministry said last month.