AIIB's Annual Meetings to kick off on Mon., Sponsored by President Sisi

Under honorable sponsorship from President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, AIIB's eighth annual meetings will kick off in Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday. 

The meetings, the first to be held in Africa, will attract some of the world's most economically influential figures, including finance ministers, and central bank governors. All of these will hold discussions over the best ways to achieve sustainable development in a world full of challenges, the latest of which the war in Europe and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Participants will seek to conclude across-the-border partnerships which could open wide horizons for bilateral and intercontinental development cooperation. They will also see how to offer greater soft-term finance opportunities to the private sector to be the locomotive of economic recovery.

Finance Minister and Egypt's governor at AIIB Mohamed Maait stressed that President Al-Sisi's sponsorship of AIIB's annual meetings sends important messages to the world, the most important of which is that Egypt is well aware of the importance of investment in the area of infrastructure and the necessity of mobilizing financial resources to stimulate the private sector to play a greater role in supporting emerging economies.

The meetings will also highlight the role of international development partners in financing development objectives in developing and African countries, especially after these countries were negatively affected by the high cost of finance in international markets.

Finance Minister Mohamed Maait added that AIIB's annual meetings will be an important international forum for Egypt to promote development investment opportunities with competitive and preferential advantages such as a strategically geographical location which make it an international hub for production and exports due to the fact that they offers great investment incentives in some promising sectors such as new and renewable energy and other infrastructure projects. These play an effective role in improving services offered to citizens and also represent a basic pillar for any economic, social and human development.

AIIB's annual meetings will also act as an international forum for shedding light on Egypt's role in connecting the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe together. This is one of the priorities of AIIB's annual meetings.

Finance Minister and Egypt's governor at AIIB Mohamed Maait also indicated that Egypt is seeking to use its membership of AIIB to reinforce multilateral and across-the-border development partnerships between the two continents of Africa and Asia. Egypt is well aware of the African dimension of its foreign policies, not to mention that this goes in line with the national goals of meeting the needs of African countries.