CAIRO, Aug 17 (Aswat Masriya) - The unemployment rate in Egypt dropped in the second quarter of 2015 to 12.7 percent, moving down from 12.8 percent in the first quarter, the statistics agency revealed on Monday.

This means that 3.5 million of Egypt's 27.8 million on the workforce were unemployed during the reporting period which ran from April to June, a statement by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics said. 

The workforce itselft has grown by 0.2 percent or 66,000 people, compared to the first three months of 2015.

The current unemployment rate is notably lower than it was for the same quarter of the previous year, when unemployment affected 13.3 percent of the workforce. The number of people unemployed at the time was 141,000 more than the 3.5 million reported on Monday.

The agency said the year-on-year drop was caused by improvements to "some economic activities."  

Already past one year into his rule, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s administration has been heavily pouring efforts into attempting to improve the country’s economic condition, relying on mega projects such as the "New Suez Canal."