Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad held a meeting with officials of the industrial pollution control project, on Sunday, to present the most important outputs of the project, strengths, weaknesses and challenges, and how to overcome them.
The Minister of the Environment praised the diversity witnessed by the program in terms of the quality and fields of projects that are supported through it, and the methods of vital fields such as water treatment, energy efficiency and alternative fuels.
A total of 126 projects were submitted to the program with a total soft loans of €483m. 40 projects were selected with a value of loans of €168m. Currently, 25 projects are being financed with soft loans and grants of about €131m, of which 16 projects are already being implemented until December 2023 with loans of €90m, in addition to 9 projects by the end of March with loans of €39m.
The minister added that the program adopts a number of goals, the most prominent of which is providing technical and financial support to industrial facilities at the governorate level, in accordance with environmental laws.
It also includes implementing projects for the use of alternative fuels in heavy industries to reduce solid waste of all kinds. Since its first phase until now, the Egyptian industry has been supported by disbursing €300m of loans and grants. This resulted in reducing 65,000 tonnes of solid particles and 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases.
The program also offers grants to small and medium enterprises to adjust their environmental conditions, estimated at €1.6m so far, to encourage them to invest in pollution reduction projects in order to sustain and expand their operations, and to involve the local community by making industrial performance evaluations and publishing them in local newspapers.
