Egypt has not received responses on GERD suggestion: FM

CAIRO – 8 January 2018: Egypt has not received any official responses from Sudan or Ethiopia to its suggestion regarding the World Bank mediation in the tripartite technical negotiations of the Renaissance Dam impacts, according to Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry.

Responding to one of the reporters questions at a joint press conference held on Monday with his Irish counterpart, Simon Coveney, Shoukry affirmed that the negotiations are still on-going; however, no official responses have been received as of yet.

Considered as a move to re-build mutual trust, Shoukry headed to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, last December with new suggestions regarding the Dam to break the tensions between the three countries.

Shoukry issued his suggestion to both of the Ethiopian and Sudanese governments with no response until now.

On November 12, the last meeting of the Tripartite National Committee on the Renaissance Dam (TNCRD), which was hosted in Cairo, concluded without reaching an agreement regarding the guidelines suggested by a study on the dam’s potential effects on the Nile Basin states, according to Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Abdel Ati.

Abdel Ati issued a statement shortly after the meeting explaining that despite Egypt’s agreement with the study’s guidelines, the other two parties of the TNCRD did not express consensus and called for amendments.

A report based on the study presents guidelines by which Ethiopia can fill its reservoir without harming the water flow into Egypt and Sudan. The $4 billion dam is being constructed on the Blue Nile with a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters and is expected to generate up to 6,000 megawatts of power.

Since May 2011, Cairo has voiced its concern over how the dam can reduce the country’s annual share of more than 56 billion cubic meters of Nile water. Egypt’s average water per-capita is expected to drop from 663 cubic meters per year to 582 cubic meters by 2025, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). However, Addis Ababa claimed that the dam is necessary for Ethiopia’s development and will not harm downstream countries.