Egypt participates in the meeting of the OECD’s Economic Development and Review Committee

 The Deputy Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Dr. Ahmed Kamali, led the Egyptian delegation that attended the meeting of the Economic and Development Committee at the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. 

 

  The meeting witnessed the presence of Alaa Youssef, the Egyptian ambassador to France, Dr. Heba Youssef, Director of the State Programs Monitoring Unit, and Dr. Amr Abu Al-Futouh, representative of the General Investment Authority. 

  The meeting discussed the Egyptian economy’s performance report, which was prepared as part of the implementation of the activities of the state program.  

 The aforementioned report [Egyptian economy’s performance report] was prepared in collaboration with representatives of OECD member countries and international organizations to take advantage of the experience of member states to identify the most important recommendations and develop applicable policies to solve economic problems. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The discussions also emphasized several dimensions of the Egyptian economy and the functioning of the Egyptian macroeconomic policy in light of world economic development. 

Dr. Ahmed Kamali, on the other hand, looked at the efforts and policies that the Egyptian government has recently followed in dealing with the consequences of successive global crises.  In this regard, he explained the readiness of the state to support the private sector and increase its participation in economic activity. 

  Kamali expressed the need to adopt a holistic approach to macroeconomic policy. 

 He also highlighted Egypt's efforts to improve public investment and shared the experience of Egypt in preparing a study evaluating the effectiveness of public sector investment with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  He explained that the recommendations and policies proposed in this assessment are currently being investigated to implement them in a way that ensures efficiency and transparency in public sector investment.  

 He also highlighted measures taken to rationalize public spending by delaying several £247 billion infrastructure projects. 

 Dr. Heba Youssef also explored the importance of the second phase of the National Structural Reforms Program to diversify the structure of the Egyptian economy and increase its competitiveness, focusing on the real side of the economy, namely the agricultural sector and the industrial sector. In addition to Egypt's competitive advantages in communication and technology, tourism, and logistics. 

 

 In this context, the national program aims to support the transition to a green economy, increase the share of exports, encourage private investment, deepen and localize industry, grow local supply chains, and integrate into global and regional value chains. 

 He also emphasized the importance of the national program implemented with the organization, which supports the implementation of the national restructuring program with its various projects. In particular, the national program promotes the inclusion of private investments in several sectors and supports the efficiency of the use of funds and the planning process of infrastructure projects through the project (5.7), which deals with the review of best practices for infrastructure investments and capacity building. 

  Dr. Amr Abu Al-Futouh, on the other hand, reviewed the recent measures taken to improve the investment climate, including the decisions of the Supreme Council of Investments, which included 22 decisions to promote and attract investments and ease the tax burden.

 Finally, the experiences of several countries were discussed, from which Egypt could benefit in the design of structural reforms. The most visible of these experiences is Costa Rica, which managed to increase private sector investments and pump foreign direct investments by applying the principles of competitive neutrality and activating the principles of free trade, and Canada's experience in forming tax incentives. 

 

 In this regard, the report includes best practices from international experiences that can be useful to support Egypt's structural reforms.