Egypt’s planning minister, World Bank delegation discuss future cooperation plan

CAIRO – 8 November 2021: Minister of Planning and Economic Development held a meeting Monday with Merza Hussain, Dean of the Board of Executive Directors at the World Bank Group, and Ambassador Raji El-Etreby, Executive Director of the World Bank for Egypt and the Arab Countries to discuss ways of future cooperation.

During the meeting, the Minister of Planning and Economic Development displayed a number of the ministry's works and projects, especially the structural reforms aimed at increasing the contribution of the industry, agriculture, and communications sectors to the national product.

El-Said also presented the features of the presidential initiative "A Decent Life" as the largest development initiative in the world in terms of its scope.

The aforementioned campaign aims to improve the quality of more than 50 million citizens with a budget of  LE800 billion in 3 years and achieve all the UN sustainable development goals.

The minister also tackled the family development project, which aims to improve the demographic characteristics of the Egyptian society.

Moreover, El-Said reviewed the activities of The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (TSFE), which is the Egyptian state's arm concerned with building partnerships with the private sector, and improving the exploitation of untapped assets through some sub-funds working in the sectors of education, health, and infrastructure.

The meeting touched on post-pandemic recovery obstacles; Egypt's interest in the green economy and the issuance of its first green bonds to finance environmentally friendly projects; the government's goal to raise the percentage of green projects in the investment plan to 30% of the budget for the current fiscal year; as well as, the issuance of environmental sustainability standards in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment.

For his part, Merza Hussain praised the steps taken by the Egyptian state to deal with the Corona pandemic, and the ability of the Egyptian economy to recover in light of international economic conditions.

He stressed the bank's interest in deepening cooperation with Egypt and supporting it with all the programs it offers to achieve further economic progress.