GERD talks to resume in Khartoum, Saturday

CAIRO- 20 December 2019: The Irrigation ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan along with the technical delegations from the three countries will be meeting on Saturday in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum to resume negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

The meeting will be discussing the rules of filling and operating GERD.

Representatives of the US Treasury Department and the World Bank will take part in the two-day meeting in Khartoum.

This new round of talks come in light of the outcome of Washington-hosted meeting on November 6, said a statement by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation on Friday.

During this gathering, the foreign ministers and water resources ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia agreed to hold four technical meetings to follow up and assess the progress so far achieved in the dam negotiations, the statement added.

The first meeting was held in Ethiopia on November 15-16 and the second meeting was held in Cairo on December 2-3.

The time-frame for filling and operating the dam is one of the main obstacles in the negotiations. The three countries have tabled different proposals on the duration of filling the GERD's reservoir. Egypt's proposal calls for a relatively extended filling period.

Ethiopia launched the GERD project in 2011 in a bid to provide electricity to more than half of its population and to become the continent's biggest power exporter, generating more than 6,000 megawatts.

Egypt, however, fears that the speed of filling the Ethiopian dam will adversely diminish its share of the River Nile water, as the country depends on the river for 85 percent of its water resources.