Minister of International Cooperation Rania el Mashaat will be participating in annual meetings of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which are held virtually this week in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a representative of Egypt and governor of the EBRD, the minister will review the bank's new economic recovery plan for 2021-2025. She will also participate in the Global Infrastructure Forum, which aims to enhance coordination between multilateral development partners with governments to develop sustainable and resilient infrastructure for emerging economies. The virtual event will also announce the election of a new president of the European Bank after the end of Mr Suma Chakrabarty's term. The meetings will be discussing ways to strengthen emerging economies' resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the EBRD invests in 38 emerging markets, and Egypt is one of the bank's largest operations in the Middle East and North Africa region. The new five-year strategy 2021-2025 seeks to strengthen economies through accelerating green investment, achieving environmental sustainability, promoting equal job opportunities for women and pushing for digital transformation. The EBRD is poised to become a majority green bank by 2025, increasing green financing to at least 50 percent of its total financing by 2025. Last September, Mashaat met with the Acting President of the EBRD to discuss the new strategy, as she emphasized that the new strategy is in line with the Egyptian government's development visions, and the Egyptian state's endeavor to achieve environmental sustainability, promote equal opportunities for women and push for digital transformation. The minister will deliver a speech at the Global Infrastructure Forum, hosted by the European Bank, which aims to achieve multilateral cooperation to strengthen and develop infrastructure around the world. Mashaat noteed that strengthening economic diplomacy revives the spirit of multilateralism and promotes meaningful and purposeful partnerships to achieve development, which can be achieved by regularly organizing multi-stakeholder platforms to ensure that all projects between development partners are streamlined and effectively coordinated; adopting a consistent Global Partnerships Narrative People & Projects & Purpose (P&P&P); and mapping ODA financing to SDGs for all projects with multilateral and bilateral development partners. The EBRD has invested more than 6.5 billion euros in more than 116 projects in Egypt covering all sectors, the most important of which are infrastructure, manufacturing, services, agriculture, banking and financial markets. The EBRD recently issued a report that sees Egypt's economy to grow at 2 percent in 2020 and rise to 5 percent growth next year, making it the only economy in the region to escape a recession in 2020.
