International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr asserted on Thursday that Egypt is looking forward to fostering cooperation with the World Bank (WB) as the country retains a cooperation portfolio of 8 billion dollars over four years. 

She made the remarks during her meeting with President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim on the sidelines of Egypt’s participation in the bank’s annual meetings in Washington.

In a related context, Kim stressed that the WB supports development projects that are being implemented by the Egyptian government, calling for focusing on the social dimension within the government reform program to help limited and middle-income brackets.

The WB is keen to support infrastructure projects in Egypt to help improve the standards of living of low-income classes through securing more job openings, Kim asserted. 

For her part, Nasr called for increasing the bank capital, which in turn contributes in backing developing countries in the region, like Egypt and building further development projects.

Afterwards, the Egyptian minister held a meeting with Vice President for the World Bank's Global Practices for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Jan Walliser and discussed the preparations for the WB delegation’s visit to Egypt from Oct 9 to 13 to conduct statistics in collaboration with the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) on poverty rate and social justice in Egypt.

Also, the two sides touched on measures of the second one-billion- dollar tranche to support the government's economic program.

Source: MENA