President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi signed on Thursday a decree approving the increase of the country's shares at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), according to Egypt's official gazette. Gazette referred that this step came after AfDB board of directors' decision no.8 of 2017, on the allocation of shares at the bank after the regular increase of its capital. In December 2017, the cabinet approved a draft presidential decree to increase Egypt's capital at the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) by $5.250 million. The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AFDB) has approved on Thursday the third and last tranche, worth $500 million, of a $1.5 billion loan package of the bank to finance Egypt's Economic Governance and Energy Support Program. The program supports Egypt's comprehensive structural reform agenda aimed to drive fiscal consolidation, strengthen governance and efficiency in the energy sector, and enhance the business operating environment, especially for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The AFD said that the current tranche will help meet the Government's financing requirement in fiscal year 2017/18. It said that the Egyptian authorities have demonstrated sustained commitment to the implementation of reforms supported under the program, including supporting business, investment and industrial growth, improving energy sustainability and security. "The bank's support will help the government's reform agenda, provide further fiscal space to help the most vulnerable segments of the population, and improve the quality of life and well-being of its citizens," Abdoulaye Coulibaly, Acting Director of the bank's Governance and Public Finance Management Coordination Unit, said in a statement by AFDB. The AFDB loan is intended to support government programs that aim to achieve social and economic development by creating new jobs and improving the business environment, according to the Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation. Minister of Investment Sahar Nasr signed the first $500 million tranche of the AfDB loan in December 2015, and the second in December 2016. The AFDB collaborated closely with development partners, including the World Bank, which provided parallel financing of $1.15 billion in December 2017. The bank currently has a portfolio of 30 projects in Egypt with a total commitment of $2.4 billion. The overarching objective of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group is to spur sustainable economic development and social progress in its regional member countries (RMCs), thus contributing to poverty reduction. The African Development Bank Group's constituent institutions are the African Development Bank (ADB), the African Development Fund (ADF) and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF), and its shareholders are 54 African countries (regional member countries) and 27 non-African countries (non-regional member countries).
