Egypt: The Minister of Planning and Economic Development of Egypt, Hala Al-Saeed, has recently met with the Executive Secretary of the Western Asia Economic and Social Committee (ESCOA), Rolla Dashti.
The meeting was organized on the margin of her participation in the ministerial work of the high-level Sustainable Development Political Forum at the United Nations in New York.
The forum was held from July 10 to 19 this year and hosted a number of leaders from across the world.
As per the reports, the political forum was held under the slogan “Accelerating coronavirus recovery and full implementation of the Sustainable Development Plan 2030 at all levels”.
In addition, Minister of Planning Hala Al-Said confirmed that development financing is still at the forefront of Egypt’s national and international priorities and requires the cooperation of all stakeholders.
Furthermore, the minister also pointed out another requirement, including the integration of various funding sources as well as the creation of innovative funding sources, expressing confidence in ESCOA’s ability to help guide this process forward to reach a fruitful outcome Worthy of our ambitions in ensuring the 2030 Sustainable Development Plan is funded, in line with the “Egypt Vision 2030”.
Al-Saeed praised the role of ESCOA for its support in presenting the Development Financing Report as part of a project that aims to study the status of development financing in Arab countries.
She added that the project plays a huge role in creating a sustainable mechanism for funding in the future, and Egypt was selected as the first Arab country in this project that addresses the full scope of development financing.
Minister of Planning further pointed to the workshop held by the ministry in cooperation with ESCOA on the integrated financing framework in Egypt and financing sustainable development goals last March.
She highlighted that developing the integrated national financing framework in Egypt can be supported through three consecutive interactive tools developed within the framework of estimating the cost of targets:
- Sustainable development
- Sustainable development goals financing simulator
- A Sustainable development goals improvement toolkit
Moreover, the tools mentioned above would work in response to the ambitions set out in Egypt’s 2030 Vision, Structural reforms program and sectoral development plans, said reports.
Al-Saeed clarified that Egypt is one of the countries that have, since the outset, identified challenges hindering the achievement of national sustainable development goals.
Following this, Egypt’s voluntary report 2018 includes four major obstacles hindering access to the UN agenda, and the most urgent issue is the funding issue; therefore, the 2021 report indicates To efforts to overcome this challenge.
Regarding the regional workshop on the submission of national voluntary reports, Hala Al-Saeed emphasized the Ministry of Planning to participate in the regional workshops organized by Esqua to prepare national voluntary reports to show Egypt’s experience in producing the three voluntary information and the lessons learned and challenges.
During the meeting, also discussed the support of ESCOA regarding the provincial competitiveness index, and the planning minister thanked the committee for its support in launching the Competitiveness Index.
