00:00Plenty going on in our part of the world and also I want to speak to you about the reform momentum in Egypt
00:05Before that speak to me about the bilateral meeting that took place yesterday between
00:11Presidents Trump and President Sisi. So yesterday we had
00:16Our president his Excellency
00:18Abdel Fattah Sisi here in Davos, and he addressed the plenary and after that there was a
00:23bilateral with President Trump two key
00:25Elements of the discussion the first one of course is the second phase of
00:33Peace, you know Egypt hosted the Sharm el-Sheikh
00:36Peace conference and played a very important role over the past two years
00:41To broker this and the involvement whether it's with the ceasefire with the hostage
00:47Return and the remains of the hostages as well. The second phase is extremely important
00:52We're at the turning point now, and I think the discussion between both presidents was to
00:57Reemphasize the commitment going forward and also
01:03Reinforce the need to work collectively to ensure that all the items within the plan are implemented
01:11The second point of course, which was very clear in the discussion had to do with Egypt's water security
01:16For more than a decade now discussions with Ethiopia on the
01:24Amount of water and and how the GERD affects Egypt's
01:30Water security during President Trump's first
01:35Term there were we were very close to an agreement
01:38So the involvement of the US second time is also expected to
01:42To have an important an important weight. Yeah, and Egypt will be signing on to the executive board of peace
01:50Is there a belief that this is actually going to lead to?
01:55Long-lasting stability in the region. I think that's why
02:00Yesterday's meeting and and other meetings create that momentum. It is in everybody's interests
02:06To have a peace and security in the region. We're here in Daffos talking about
02:13Economic growth
02:14Prosperity and that can only happen if there's peace and security in the region. Yeah
02:19Well, let's talk about the reforms that Egypt has enacted over the last couple of years because there have been plenty including
02:25Slashing subsidies devaluing the currency by around 40 percent
02:30How is this all being factored into the macroeconomic outlook for growth this year?
02:36So, um, I just want everybody watching to think of egypt
02:41neighboring
02:43You know gaza neighboring sudan neighboring libya a very volatile region nonetheless
02:49We have been growing by five percent
02:52Tourism is at an all-time high, so there has been a lot of resilience in the egyptian economy
02:57And that has come on the back of very detailed reforms across the board
03:02We started with macroeconomic reforms on the fiscal and monetary side. This was in march
03:0624
03:07But from then on
03:09reforms related to
03:11Industry related to the business environment related to
03:16The green transition all of these reforms have been
03:19Creating more credibility with investors have been creating a conducive environment to attract
03:25private investments both for egyptians or egyptian firms and foreign firms
03:29So what we are doing currently with a new narrative is to say we're
03:35Maximizing on the infrastructure which has been
03:38Invested in heavily over the past
03:4110 years to basically
03:43Open up for the second phase more emphasis on high value products productivity
03:48As well as tradables what other reforms can we expect?
03:51You know reforms is is a continuous process and given all the
03:58You know the evolving global picture and regional picture
04:02Countries need to be agile in order to create that resilience and grow
04:05What's very important for us growth and jobs what's very important for us is to continue
04:11Investments in human capital
04:13Be it on health and education so all the fiscal space that is created and all the
04:19You know the financing of
04:21Of of the gap is going to be directed towards social spending so this is this is something that we are
04:27Very much moving ahead with and reforming in that direction
04:30Yeah, one other development has been egypt signing deals where
04:34Debt is swapped into equity and you've done that with the uae you've done that with qatar are there more deals like this on the horizon
04:42So our debt management has also been
04:45Quite diverse and innovative we have for instance budget support
04:51From ifis which you know lengthens
04:54The maturity of that it also reduces the overall
04:58Cost of financing that so that's one element the other element as you mentioned is that swap and we have two different types of that swaps
05:05That swaps for equity as you mentioned
05:07Like rass al-hikmah and alam al-rum, but we also have that swaps for development
05:12So with the italy and germany we've over the past
05:15Many years done around a billion dollars of debt swaps
05:18There's one coming up also with with china
05:20And let me mention that the death swaps with germany are also anchored towards the green transition
05:25So to try and push
05:27The renewable story in egypt we want to have 42 percent renewable by 2030
05:32And the amount of foreign investments in that sector wind solar green hydrogen and also battery storage
05:38We're talking about six billion dollars in the past three years
05:41It sounds as though there's a diversification when it comes to the financing that you're seeking
05:47Are you actively seeking new financing sources right now?
05:52You know part of the macroeconomic stability story is
05:55Putting ceilings on public investment
05:58And creating a governance structure around that and that is to push more private sector investments
06:02And therefore the priority of our borrowing currently is really for strategic goods
06:09And filling in the financing gap for budget support
06:12So this means that with the multilateral development banks with partners
06:18Budget support is our key
06:20Priority and then that because that lowers the cost of financing compared to going to the markets
06:26We also have guarantees from ifis for our bonds like the panda bond which happened before
06:33Yeah, one of the criticisms is that the the quality of the data that comes through on the gdp
06:41On the gdp side of things is a bit questionable. Have there been any
06:47Plans to improve the quality of the data well, I haven't heard that criticism before
06:51But for all countries that are members of the i at the imf there are regular reviews
06:58Of all data were part of the sdds, which is the standard
07:02for data
07:04Systems and there's always
07:07Updates in terms of base year in terms of the input output tables and so forth
07:13So I would I would say it's more from the perspective of including parts of the informal economy
07:19So that's that's that's not quality of data
07:21That is size of the economy
07:22So I just wanted to be clear that data quality is one issue
07:26And then informality in many emerging markets and developing economies is sort of
07:33There and what is very important and that's what's what we're working on for example the we have a new
07:41Micro and small and medium enterprise law which actually encourages
07:45Uh, the informal
07:46Uh participants to become formal with a lot of incentives and we're seeing that taking place
07:53Uh, it is a very important task, but we are doing a lot of reforms in that
07:57In that sense. Yeah. What do you think the biggest risk is then?
08:00It's it you're painting a very positive picture
08:02What what are you worried about this year? No, I think just being here in davos?
08:06Uh, there were three key messages that everybody is
08:09Repeating the first is the geopolitical risks in general and the uncertainty around that
08:14But that is you know that no country is excluded
08:18From that the second one is the global economy has become more resilient than anyone expected given the trades
08:24And the protectionism policies that are taking place and then the ai
08:28I think I think the
08:30Inequality that might be created
08:32By ai and here. I mean inequality between countries
08:35I think that is the biggest risk all of us have to be very mindful of that
08:38Uh, we had a lot of discussions about uh, you know distinguishing between ai
08:44In terms of users versus also
08:48Those who produce the rnd and the programming and so forth
08:50So I think that that to me is is something which uh, you know
08:54Changes the concepts of convergence between countries
08:57So this is something that we all have to really work together on inclusivity when it comes to ai
09:01Minister. Thank you so much. Thank you
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