Egypt: The presidency of the Egyptian Council of Ministers recently shared an update regarding the recently conducted meeting of Prime Minister Dr Mustafa Madbouly and the officials of World Bank.
As per the update, Prime Minister held a meeting with officials of the World Bank in Egypt this evening to review the proposed elements added to the industry development strategy being prepared by the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Accordingly, the meeting was attended by Engr. Ahmed Samir, Minister of Trade and Industry; Marina Weiss, Director of the International Bank of Egypt, Mark Ahern, Manager of the Economic File at the World Bank of Egypt Office; Mohamed Al-Shetty, Expert of the World Bank Sector; Olafsen, Expert of the First Sector, and Amr Hazaa. Advisor to the Trade and Industry Minister for Development Projects, Alsheima Ali, Director-General of Strategies and Development Projects in the Ministry.
While concluding the meeting, the Prime Minister pointed out that the cooperation with the World Bank to prepare this strategy comes amid the keenness of leveraging on the international institution’s expertise in preparing strategies similar to other countries that have been able to deliver a breakthrough in the industry file.
He added, “We aim to prepare an integrated national strategy for industrial development in line with various challenges and extremely difficult global conditions experienced by all countries of the world, including Egypt, in order to achieve a high industrial growth rate and increase the industry’s share of the GDP, as well as achieving high growth rates for Egyptian exports.”
The Presidency of the Egyptian Council of Ministries has furthermore informed that during the meeting, Engr/Ahmed Samir, Minister of Trade and Industry, explained that preparing a national strategy to promote the industry sector was one of the recommendations of the economic conference held in October 2022, certainly that the sector is one of the top priorities of the government during the current stage.
The minister pointed out that the National Industrial Development Strategy is being prepared in cooperation and drawing on the experiences of many other international institutions, including the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the German development agency GIZ, in order to obtain technical and consultative support during the preparation of the strategy.
He added that in addition to cooperation with international institutions, the Ministry has also made sure to coordinate with business organizations and private sector institutions such as trade unions, investor associations and export councils.
During the meeting, Marina Weiss, Qatari Director of the International Bank in Egypt, said the Bank had received a request from the Trade and Industry Ministry to provide support in preparing the Egyptian strategy for the advancement of the industry last November, confirming, “Since we received the request, we began to prepare proposed elements for the strategy, and today we are reviewing it.”
She added, “The strategy consists of two phases; the first phase focuses on deepening domestic manufacturing, and the second focuses on developing industrial sectors.”
Moreover, she confirmed that the World Bank is supporting the Egyptian government by providing technical expertise in this strategy in cooperation with the German Development Agency “GIZ” and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization “UNIDO”.
In the meantime, Mohamed Al-Shetty, the World Bank’s First Sector Development Expert, reviewed the five key axes to achieve the competitiveness of the Egyptian industry sectors, adding that every industry sector requires – to advance – a set of essential requirements.
The five axes represent the empowerment of the business environment, access to production and product marketing elements, easy access to annexed industrial land, support for trained human and technical capacity, as well as easing access to funding.
In addition to this, he elaborated that the second phase of the strategy would include a detailed presentation of the growth of each sector in view of the surrounding economic conditions.
Olen Olafsen, World Bank’s first development expert, presented a set of recommendations for implementing this strategy, similar to its implementation in a number of countries around the world.
