Al-Mashat: Egypt's Issuance of Green bonds Enhances Economic Progress

International Cooperation Minister and Egypt's Governor for the World Bank Group Dr. Rania Al-Mashat hailed on Monday the government’s efforts to persify financing for sustainable infrastructure projects, as well as its interest in green financing.

Al-Mashat mentioned that the government has recently issued the first green bonds in the Middle East and North Africa worth $750 million.

Al-Mashat was addressing a World Bank session titled "Post COVID-19: A Brave New World for Investing in the Infrastructure of the Future" with the participation of South African Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Patricia de Lille, Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, IFC's Vice President of Economics and Private Sector Development Hans Peter Lanke, and Global Director of Infrastructure Finance, PPPs & Guarantees at the World Bank.

Al-Mashat noted that Egypt is undergoing a gradual but significant strategic shift towards pursuing private finance and commercial investment for infrastructure before the pandemic.

[caption id="attachment_161150" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Al-Mashat Participates in Post COVID-19: A Brave New World for Investing in the Infrastructure of the Future Session[/caption]

Engaging with the private sector, there are currently more than 1,000 companies and nearly two million Egyptian workers working on national megaprojects that are “contributing to a new chapter in Egypt’s economic progress,” the minister noted, these mega projects have provided buffers for Egypt at the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis.”

Al-Mashat listed a few indicators that show Egypt’s efforts in the infrastructure sector around the country, noting that there are 35 projects in the housing sectors with a total of $5.657 billion, 23 projects in the electricity and energy sector with a total of $4.896 billion, 17 projects in the transport sector with a total of $4.762 billion, six projects in the petrol sector with a total of $1.129 billion, 10 projects in the irrigation and water resources sector with a total of $982 million and 17 projects in Sinai with a total of $1.950 billion.

One notable example is building the world’s largest solar array at the Benban Solar Park in Aswan Governorate, which employs more than 4,000 people, is part of the Egyptian government’s Sustainable Energy Strategy 2035 that aims to produce 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2022.

"Egypt has been able to scale up private sector involvement in infrastructure and develop successful public-private partnership models, owing to a national policy encouraging private investments," she added.

In the event of a global downturn, multilateral development banks should boost crisis lending and provide capacity building and technical support to avoid lasting socio-economic damage and enable a faster recovery, the minister stated.

It is worthy to note that Egypt’s economy is on track to grow by 2% in 2020 and projected to rebound by 5% in 2021 as reflected in EBRD’s Regional Economic Prospects report, making it the only economy across all of the EBRD regions likely to escape recession in the 2020 calendar year, supported partly by large public construction projects and a boom in the telecommunications sector.