Egypt attracts investors from Japan and China with green bonds for "Samurai" and "Panda"

Egypt is moving strongly towards a green recovery, with attractive prospects for domestic and foreign investments based on a strong and developed infrastructure capable of accommodating more productive activities.

Egypt aims to create a promising development path that helps overcome the severity of global economic risks, in which the repercussions of the Corona pandemic are intertwined with the extremely negative effects of the war in Europe.

In this regard, the Minister of Finance said at the “Euromoney Egypt” conference in Cairo, that we are looking forward to a more improved and sustainable economic situation in 2023 with the growth of non-oil and petroleum exports and the revenues of the Suez Canal.

Meeting the basic needs of citizens

He added, “We are keen to meet the basic needs of citizens, in a way that contributes to mitigating the global inflationary wave, so that the state bears the greatest burden on them, while continuing to expand social protection for the neediest and most vulnerable groups, to reduce the burdens on their shoulders.”

The minister indicated that Egypt is working to diversify financing sources, reduce its costs, and expand innovative financing mechanisms, by issuing sustainable, blue and social bonds, sukuk, and “green samurai” bonds in Japan and “green panda” in China, This contributes to attracting new segments of investors.

Suez Canal revenues

  He explained that the revenues of the Suez Canal achieved a record high of about $7 billion, during the last fiscal year ending in June 2022, and Egypt's natural gas exports amounted to $600 million per month.

And he continued, “We aim to reach one billion dollars per month during the next year, which contributed to an increase in oil exports from 8.6 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2020/2021, to 18 billion dollars last June.”

  A net oil surplus of about $4.4 billion was achieved, instead of a net oil deficit over the past years, and non-oil exports increased by 29.1%.

100 billion dollars in total exports

  The government aims to reach $100 billion in total exports in 5 years, by laying the foundations for a more stimulating climate for industry, production and export. To achieve sustainable and job-rich growth led by the private sector, as the government opens up broad prospects for it through the State Ownership Policy document recently approved by the Council of Ministers, with the aim of paving more room for expanding private sector contributions to economic activity.

The Minister of Finance stated that we succeeded in maintaining the stability of financial performance indicators during the year 2021/2022, in light of exceptional international circumstances, and we were able to reduce the total budget deficit to 6.1% of GDP.

achieving a primary surplus of 1.3%, reducing the debt to 87.2%, down from 103% in June 2016; This illustrates the importance of the proactive measures taken by the government in dealing with the negative effects of the global economic crises.