IFC Pledges Over $2b for Egypt Private Sector

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation said on Tuesday it is keen to provide more than the pledged amount of $2 billion in financing to the Egyptian private sector by 2019, targeted primarily at entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Mouayed Makhlouf, the IFC’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, told Ahram Online during a roundtable on the group’s Arab World Competitiveness Report 2018, that IFC is committed to providing the $2 billion financing to Egypt, and even more financing for the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises.

IFC head Philippe Le Houerou told Investment Minister Sahar Nasr in July of the group’s promised financing in 2019 for the private sector, as well as its provision of technical support on the execution of public-private partnerships in the field of renewable energy.

Makhlouf said the support from the group came due to reforms carried out by Egypt in recent years. “There are the kind of reforms that we want to see in the Arab world,” Makhlouf said, citing Egypt’s efforts through its 2014 embarked economic reform program and other reforms which helped it secure a $12 billion IMF  loan package.

“That’s where we want to put our money, in countries similar to Egypt,” he said, citing Egypt’s GDP of 5.2% and an anticipated 5.8% in the next fiscal, as predicted by the IMF.

“There’s an interesting momentum in Egypt,” Mirek Dusek, the deputy head of geopolitical and regional affairs at the World Economic Reform said from Geneva during a conference call at the IFC headquarters in Cairo.

The IFC’s total investments in Egypt are worth $1.2 billion, according to a statement last week.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s unemployment rate fell to 9.9% in the second quarter of 2018, down from 11.98% during the same period a year ago, state statistics agency CAPMAS said on Wednesday.