Rania Al-Mashat, Minister of International Cooperation and Governor of Egypt at the World Bank Group, met with Marina Wes, Country Director for Egypt, Yemen, and Djibouti at the World Bank, to complete the periodic review on the results of the Development Policy Financing Framework.
The framework is a result of extensive consultations that were carried out between technical teams from the Ministry of International Cooperation and the World Bank in coordination with line ministries as well as other policy makers and civil society actors to finalize 2021 reforms that push for private sector engagement.
In November, the virtual meetings that were held on structural reforms to implement for the years 2020 and 2021 focused on four pillars: preserve macroeconomic gains, promote access to women’s economic opportunities, strengthen firm and financial sector resilience, and improve infrastructure sector governance for greater private sector participation.
Minister Al-Mashat underlined that the government of Egypt is committed to maintain its pace of development through pushing ahead with a second wave of reforms and accelerate the delivery of development financing to achieve a more sustainable future.
She pointed to the importance of joint cooperation with the World Bank Group and its role in supporting development plans in line with national priorities, pointing out that this year witnessed agreement on a number of important development funds with the World Bank, the most important of which is $400m for the Ministry of Health to implement the comprehensive health insurance, and $50m to support the emergency response to combat the coronavirus.
During 2020, Egypt signed with the World Bank Group a total of four agreements in the sectors of health, social solidarity, and environment worth $1.15bn. The most important of these was the universal health coverage, where the World Bank allocated $400m to support Egypt’s transformational Universal Health Insurance System.
This year, the Ministry of International Cooperation has been working to apply the principles of economic diplomacy to strengthen the “Global Partnerships for Effective Development”. These principles include regularly organizing multi-stakeholder platforms to ensure that all projects between development partners are streamlined and effectively coordinated; adopting a consistent Global Partnerships Narrative People&Projects&Purpose (P&P&P); and mapping ODA financing to SDGs for all projects with multilateral and bilateral development partners.
For her part, Marina Wes underscored the value of cooperation with Egypt, and referred to Egypt as a strategic partner in implementing various impactful development projects. Wes also praised the role of the Ministry of International Cooperation in fostering dialogue and coordination between ministries and development partners.
The current cooperation portfolio between Egypt and the World Bank Group amounts to around $6bn, across several sectors including housing, water and wastewater, social protection, transportation, health, education, local development, petroleum, environment, and SMEs.
