Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat met on Thursday with several heads of chambers of commerce, business councils, and associations to explore opportunities to enhance the private sector's engagement in national development efforts by advancing international partnerships with international financial institutions (IFIs). This meeting comes in line with the state's efforts to scale up the private sector's engagement in the national economy and development process. Al-Mashat claimed the meeting is a tool to enhance the establishment of a liaison between the representatives of the private sector in Egypt in order to create efficient partnerships between the private sector and multilateral and bilateral development partners. "This also creates integration between all stakeholders through development financings and technical support provided, which accordingly paves the way to unleashing the private sector's potential and supporting its role in enhancing the country's development cooperation portfolio," Al-Mashat explained. She also affirmed that the strengthened communication between business councils and chambers of commerce will lead to building effective cooperation mechanisms in the near future that will serve the achievement of Egypt's Vision 2030. On green financing, Al-Mashat emphasised that it is one of the most important financing tools in order to enhance the private sector's engagement, which has become one of the main areas of interest for IFIs. In this respect, Egypt was the first country in the region to launch sovereign green bonds, which took place in 2020, with a value of $750 million. In 2020, the Ministry of International Cooperation secured $9.8 billion in development financing, including $3.2 billion in support of the private sector from development partners such as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the French Development Agency (AFD), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. These financings contributed to supporting several projects and companies across various sectors such as renewable energy, telecommunications, infrastructure, housing, tourism, and manufacturing, in addition to providing credit lines for small and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).
