The Minister of Planning, Economic Development, and International Cooperation, Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, proceeded with her meetings at the Summit of the Future in New York and the 79th session of the UN General Assembly.
Minister Al-Mashat met with Mr. Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Ms. Marina Ponti, Global Director of the United Nations SDG Action Campaign, Mr. Hassan Mulla, CEO of Silatech, and Ms. Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
During their meeting, Minister Al-Mashat and Ms. Rebeca Grynspan talked about important topics that will be covered at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly. Ms. Grynspan greeted the Minister at the UNCTAD headquarters in New York before the meeting began.
The Minister gave Ms. Grynspan an update on the Egyptian government’s new organizational structure and the unification of ministries, which intends to increase the range of bilateral ties and UNCTAD cooperation.
Dr. Al-Mashat stressed the government’s emphasis on creating specialized ministerial committees for entrepreneurship, industrial development, and human development. He also emphasized the value of trade and investment in promoting equitable financing for development, as well as the significance of economic development as a unifying factor for all sectors of the economy.
The need to help developing nations obtain just finance in accordance with the guidelines of the “Sharm El Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing,” which was introduced during COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, was also discussed.
The Minister talked about cooperation in promoting and luring foreign direct investments and emphasized the significance of UNCTAD’s support for the Egyptian government’s execution of the “NWFE” program, a major initiative during the climate conference that aims to attract green investments.
After the two ministries were integrated, Minister Al-Mashat unveiled the new framework, which aims to achieve sustainable economic growth through three main means: improving resource allocation through a comprehensive framework that mobilizes domestic and international financing for priority sectors and accelerates progress towards sustainable development goals; building a resilient future economy to ensure macroeconomic stability and implement structural reforms that enhance competitiveness and financial resilience; and using data-driven policies to address sectoral development gaps.
Using UNCTAD’s toolset for measuring outcomes—which offers superior, fact-based assessments to guide national, regional, and global policy design targeted at promoting inclusive sustainable development—was another topic of discussion during the summit.
This is in line with initiatives to improve evidence-based statistics and data quality, as well as to foster collaboration between Egypt and the organization in this area.
Ms.
Grynspan, for her part, stated that UNCTAD is prepared to assist Egypt in identifying quality gaps in economic development for every sector and in finding opportunities that are waiting to be fully tapped into for long-term, sustainable economic growth.
In addition, she emphasized the value of trilateral and South-South collaboration based on other nations’ successful models.
