President Rousseff,
Excellencies Ministers of Finance, members of the board of Governors,
Distinguished Colleagues,
Allow me to express my gratitude and appreciation to the People’s Republic of China for the excellent organization and warm hospitality.
It is indeed a pleasure to speak today at the Eighth New Development Bank Annual Meeting of the board of governors, it is the first annual meeting for Egypt to participate, since becoming part of the first group of new member countries to join the bank. Sharing the same vision with founding and new members, Egypt firmly believes in the mission and mandate of the bank, particularly its goal of mobilizing resources for infrastructure and development projects in emerging market economies and developing countries. Given that NDB’s shareholders structure is created and owned by emerging market economies and developing countries, it provides a unique opportunity and platform for South-South Cooperation and an avenue for developing countries to have a voice in the Multilateral Development sphere.
The theme of this annual meeting “Shaping a new era for global development” is a timely topic. The confluence of global challenges and disruptions including the COVID-19 Pandemic and geopolitical tensions have resulted in emerging markets and developing countries bearing the brunt of the negative impacts of these challenges, which will cast a shadow over the development process of the developing countries for a long time to come, inter alia, affecting international multilateral cooperation to face common challenges including climate change, diminished fiscal spaces, increased financial market volatility, threats of de-globalization resulting in unprecedented challenges for the achievement of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Therefore, the New Development Bank’s mandate to provide a crucial platform to mobilize resources for sustainable infrastructure development through enhancing and institutionalizing multilateral cooperation between Emerging Market and Developing Countries is most needed and critical to face the aforementioned challenges. As the bank’s membership expands over the coming years, I am sure that this role will continue to grow and flourish.
Egypt being a well-known supporter of Multilateral Cooperation, reassures its support to the NDB and will do its utmost to pave the way for a brighter future for this institution in collaboration with all its members and management team.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Egypt is strategically located at a vital crossroads between Africa, Asia and Europe. This distinctive location and possession of the Suez Canal has made us of special significance to the world, serving as a trade interlocutor for the East and the West. Over the past 7 years, Egypt has adopted an ambitious, home gown and comprehensive economic reform program. This program has yielded numerous gains including the restoration of macroeconomic stability and the regaining of market and investors’ confidence, growth pick-up that has been job rich and broadly based, and sizeable improvement of its public finance and debt sustainability. Building on these successes, we are working on safeguarding macroeconomic stability and enhancing structural reforms to unleash Egypt’s potential and to secure a high and inclusive growth path. Institutional reform is also being deepened and broadened to create a hospitable environment for increased private sector participation. However, COVID-19 and other external geopolitical shocks have resulted in severe setbacks and has increased challenges in maintaining these hard-earned gains.
Therefore, to uphold these hard-earned gains and to ensure that they are secured, many governments, including Egypt, are shifting to harness increased global partnerships and multilateral cooperation to avail more commercial financing, mobilize private investments for huge infrastructure projects and utilize public private partnerships for infrastructure taking into account digital connectivity, environmental sustainability, human capital and social infrastructure while utilizing innovative financial instruments. This requires multilateral cooperation that can spur sustainable economic development, progress and prosperity. Thus, it is essential to lay the necessary frameworks to catalyze the mobilization of resources particularly the private sector capital alongside the public sector to develop major projects that encourage filling the infrastructure financing gap across our respective countries.
Finally, I would like to saying that there is a need for us to commit ourselves to fulfill the dreams and aspirations of our peoples. The only way to fulfill their aspirations is through building strategic and inclusive partnership between governments, international organizations, global financial institutions as well as the public and the private sector to achieve the sustainable development goals and face climate changes. It is important to ensure that needed mechanisms are in place to mobilize adequate capital to finance in a sustainable manner our developmental needs including securing reliable technical assistance from development financial institutions and multilateral development banks to our countries.
Thank you for your kind attention.