The CEBC International Cooperation committee chaired by Ms. Hanna El Hilaly, Director General of the International Cooperation and Planning, Cabinet of Ministers Egypt, Social Fund for Development, had the pleasure to hold a roundtable discussion to highlight the topic of ‘Donors Intervention and Assistance in Post Revolution Egypt’. Distinguished panelists were Mr. Hideki Matsunaga, Chief Representative, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Mr. Jean-Pierre Marcelli, Director, Agence Francaise de Development (AFD).

Ms. Hanna El Hilaly pointed out that despite Egypt is going through an intricate time, there is still room for business and cooperation between different international donors, ‘I can tell they are very passionate very interested not only in providing loans and grants to the public sector but also to the private sector’, commented Ms. Hilaly.

This meeting was the first in a series of upcoming ones highlighting this important topic aiming at supporting the development of Egypt in such a critical phase. Future meetings will feature African Development Bank who is interested to develop in the field of franchise ‘the good news is that we have a 40 million dollar loan from the African Development bank dedicated to develop the franchise sector in Egypt providing capacity building and providing access to franchising’, said Ms. Hilaly.
Ms. Hilaly said that small and medium enterprises in times of crises are very important physical tool for development. They support enterprises and entrepreneurship as well as intervention of partners in spreading entrepreneurship awareness. “In Egypt we are all afraid of mitigating with the risk of becoming business entrepreneurs, however neither the government nor the public sector is able to satisfy the demand over the market since we have over 700 thousand graduates from universities.”

The SFD provides financial and non financial services. It is geographically spread all over Egypt and present nationwide providing access to licensing, marketing to studies, to finance and to capacity building. In spite of 2011 revolution, the following year brought a burst over of LE 2.15 billion with financing SMEs, L.E. 109 million for labor intensive projects, funded 140 thousand micro enterprises in addition to 18 thousand small projects and issued 13 thousand permits to formalize the informal sector as well as mentoring, coaching and demonstrating success providing them non financial services.

Turning to Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), it was established as an incorporated administrative agency under the Act of the Incorporated Administrative Agency-Japan International Cooperation Agency (Act No. 136, 2002), it started its activities in 1970’s in Egypt, in 2008 merged with part of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation in order to form new JICA.

JICA aims to contribute to the promotion of international cooperation as well as the sound development of Japanese and global economy by supporting the socioeconomic development, recovery or economic stability of developing regions. Accordingly, JICA has provided soft loan assistance and citizen grants as part of its activities. Not only for the ongoing construction project in Giza establishing the New Grand Egyptian Museum but to enhance the capacity and the capability of conservation and preservation techniques of Egyptian curators and archeologists.

Furthermore, the Egyptian Grand Museum Conservation Center -next to the construction sites- built by Egyptian budget not to mention the recently opened Egyptian Japan University for Science and Technology in Alexandria. Metro Line 4 project is a crucial component of the soft loan projects formulated by the new master plan, so-called strategic framework.

In addition to JICA’s regular volunteers, they started to dispatch young Japanese people to NGOs and to the Egyptian government to teach and work with local people.

‘The economic and political situation of Egypt is very challenging but Egypt is not the only one country to experience this kind of transformation. According to recent studies, since 1960’s there have been about 103 cases of major transition processes and 57 of them have experienced -even during the transitional time- steady economic growth. 43 countries have experienced sharp decline in GDP and 40% of the cases, the reconstruction of their economy lasted more than five years. The lesson is that economy needs time to be put back on track and a good example is Indonesia who required ten years to restore a pre-revolutionary economy”, said Mr. Matsunaga.

JICA has three pillars of assistance strategy: employment creation, poverty reduction, life improvement and promotion of regional stability. Its activities focus on industry development as well as development of basic infrastructure folded business in energy and transport.

“We extended $US 112 million loan over the last eleven years with the SFD in order to help small-medium enterprises (SMEs) not only to finance energy and transport sectors but also to strengthen the foundation of human resources especially in the technology field, we are also trying to improve the productivity of the Egyptian manufacturer, to provide some assistance for exporting more promotions through EDPC as well as FTPC. We are also engaged in agriculture productivity growth in particularly the small agro-products in Upper Egypt”, said Mr. Matsunaga.

Being asked about JICA’s activities in the fields of energy and transport, Mr. Matsunaga clarified the fact that JICA has offered more than $US1.7 billion to many energy sectors and in 5-6 years the focus will be on development of renewable energy such as developing solar power in Hurghada.

“One of the very touching issues that occurred to Japan after the Tsunami is that around 174 counties in addition to 43 international organizations provided assistance and support to us. The financial contribution extended to Japan was more than $US2 billion but actually, the biggest donor to Japan was the Middle East including Egypt”, Mr. Matsunaga concluded his remarks.

Moving to the Agence Française de Development (AFD), it provides funding and technical assistance for development projects and programs that enhance more sustainable and shared economic growth efforts that improve living conditions for the poorest, work to preserve the environment, and stabilize countries in fragile situations. The involvement of AFD in Egypt was materialized in February 2007 with the opening of the Cairo Office. It has accelerated project identification and enhanced the dialogue with the Egyptian administration and AFD’s potential partners in the public and private sectors. AFD finances projects, programs and studies through grants, loans, guarantee funds and debt reduction-development. It also provides capacity development support to its partners in developing countries.
AFD has sixty offices worldwide and covers most of the developing countries. Its work extended to Asia in the last few years and moved to Central and Southern Latin America in the last two years.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Marcelli stated that AFD’s priority lies on Sub-Saharan Africa, the epicenter of today’s development challenges and opportunities, “sometimes Sub Saharan Africa got more political challenge than Indonesia or Latin America which makes it difficult to work there but that’s truly an area where the highest concentration of people living under the poverty line lies but is also a huge potential of growth, a 5% regional growth in the last 10 years” said Mr. Marcelli. He also said that the Middle East and North Africa receive 20% of the French foreign aid and AFD tries to focus on job creation, reduction of social and territorial disparities, reducing inequalities in terms of water supply, education, energy and other social services. “AFD aims at improving the quality of life; this includes the environment especially high level of air pollution and water deterioration issues”, said Mr. Marcelli.

Mr. Marcelli came across the most important activities of AFD represented in loans to governance, for countries which are still in need of development assistance as far as the private sector considered. AFD provides guarantees and have a private sector company “COBACO” which provides direct financing to cooperates.

Breakdown of the nearly 7 billion euro funding activities by region:
• 1.1 billion euro in 2011 in Middle East and North Africa
• 1 billion euro in Latin America
• 1.1 billion euro in French provinces
• 2.7 billion euro in South Africa

“We work in business with a focus on trade, environment, natural resources and food security. We work with other donors such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank; we have also established bilateral operations with Germans, British and Americans. We’re working with United Nations family, Global Funds, CIDA, foundations and charities. European teams are very important to us as we syndicate and finance together to achieve our important goals and projects among which: 1.53 million people got drinking water, 4 million children from primary schooling and 2 million children from elementary schooling got better education, 430 thousand people got educational training and 6 million people got access to electricity. We have an action plan to support rationalization and creating jobs and connecting private sector with funds”, mentioned Mr. Marcelli.

To conclude, Mr. Marcelli revealed some of the 2012-14 action plans in Egypt:
• Developing means of urban public transport
• Financing water and sanitation programs
• Upgrading infrastructures (improve informal areas, support basic economic activity)
• Improving general living conditions
• Supporting the rationalization of the usage of natural fossils
• Developing solar and wind energy usage in Egypt
• Creating job opportunities and supporting SMEs
• Developing the agricultural small projects
• Partnerships and knowledge sharing with other countries
• Extension of Metro Line 3 (2.5 million people using the metro every day)

After the presentations, the floor was then open to questions from the attendees, which covered a lot of issues, means of financing, success stories and sharing ideas for the development of other Egyptian projects.