The World Bank's vice president for the Middle East and North Africa said the value of the bank's development projects in Egypt is $1.2 billion annually, the state news agency MENA reported on Tuesday. Vice President Hafez Ghanem was cited by MENA as saying that the bank is holding talks with the Egyptian government to discuss ways to support the quality of education and raise the standard of living of Egyptian farmers. He also discussed supporting projects in the energy sector, which he described as one of the most important development sectors in the country. The World Bank says its current portfolio in Egypt is worth $5.92 billion and includes 26 projects in sectors including housing, health and transport. On Sunday, the bank and Egypt signed a programme worth $550 million to improve "sanitation services for more than 800,000 poor Egyptians in the Nile Delta," the bank said in a statement. "The program will improve the well-being of rural Egyptians who suffer from poor access to sanitation services and face serious environmental and health threats," the bank's country director for Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti Asad Alam said at the time. During his trip to New York last month to head Egypt's delegation at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim UN gathering. Sisi told Kim that the Middle East "needs to achieve stability through development." He added that the World Bank's contribution to advancing the region does not only have a humanitarian dimension, but must also contribute to achieving security and stemming unrest. Ghanem's statements were made on Monday at a meeting to discuss prospects for the MENA region and release their strategy in the Middle East. The World Bank said that growth in the Middle East is "stagnating" and that "except for Egypt, Morocco and Iran, almost all MENA countries are growing slowly, but for different reasons." The bank predicts economic growth for Egypt in 2015 and 2016 to hover around 4 percent but adds "Egypt may need an extra US$30–35 billion in investment and another US$10 billion for developing its infrastructure in coming years." Source: Aswat Masriya
