Innovation crucial to promote green recovery after COVID-19: Al-Mashat

CAIRO – 17 December 2020: Innovation will be crucial to promote a green recovery after COVID-19 crisis, particularly in developing countries, and that rethinking the model of trade and services will be crucial to move forward after the pandemic, Minister of International Cooperation, Rania Al-Mashat said Thursday.

“The potential for a green recovery and environmentally conscious investments are finding their way into the spotlight, which pushes for a globalized agenda as ESG principles are now rules that all governments and companies must follow,” she added.

Al-Mashat said that Egypt is committed to pushing the multilateral agenda forward through pushing the frontiers of international cooperation, Minister of International Cooperation.

She added that the fruits of multilateralism can be seen in recent economic indicators of Egypt’s emerging economy, as it was singled out as the only economy to escape a recession in 2020 by the IMF and EBRD.

“There was the rhetoric of deglobalization, but as we progressed during the year, we reached the conclusion that no country or market operates in isolation, and the fact remains that we still operate in a hyper-connected world,” Al-Mashat stated.

This came during Al-Mashat’s participation at the high-level virtual event ‘Globalization at the Crossroads: Risk, Resilience and Recalibration in Global Trade and Value Chains’ as part of the 2020 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization (FGI), which is a series of annual forums jointly organized by UNIDO, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) and the Kiel Centre for Globalization (KCG).

They discussed the challenges and opportunities of technological shifts for global value chains (GVCs), which included Susan Lund, a partner of McKinsey & Company and a leader of the McKinsey Global Institute, and Ricardo Hausmann, Professor at Harvard University.

The minister added that Egypt adopted a number of measures to improve the resilience of MSMEs and create a cohesive ecosystem for the private sector to thrive over the years. Through pushing ahead with homegrown structural reforms, Egypt created a predictive policy environment that was integral to achieving a more transparent macroeconomic framework and improving governance. 

Emerging economies can seize the opportunity to become important destinations for trade and sourcing, as the vast impact of COVID -19 has shown that a lack of diversification in sourcing strategies and overreliance on key global markets increases vulnerability to global shocks.

As such, emerging economies offer a clear advantage and immense opportunities for firms and businesses to search for new markets in light of current uncertainties, and which accelerates the transition to inclusive and sustainable development both globally and locally.

In 2020 alone, Ministry of International Cooperation secured a total of 3,191 billion dollars dedicated to supporting the private sector and MSMEs, which was in cooperation with various development partners including the European Investment Bank, International Finance Corporation and the French Development Agency.

There are also new trends for emerging economies to capitalize on, such as digitalization and the rise of new technologies, which represent a fundamental change in the future of international production. Egypt has been keen on supporting the digitalization of technologies to pave the way for better mitigation of disruptions and efficient operations, most recently through funding worth EGP 100 million from Saudi Arabia to the Bank of Alexandria to support the digitization of small and medium enterprises.

Currently, there are 18 ongoing projects being implemented worth 37 million dollars in cooperation with UNIDO, which come within the framework of the Program for Country Partnership (PCP) aimed to provide sustainable solutions for inclusive and sustainable industrial development.

Ministry of International Cooperation has been working to apply the principles of economic diplomacy to strengthen the ‘Global Partnerships for Effective Development’. These principles include regularly organizing multi-stakeholder platforms to ensure that all projects between development partners are streamlined and effectively coordinated; adopting a consistent Global Partnerships Narrative People&Projects&Purpose (P&P&P); and mapping ODA financing to SDGs for all projects with multilateral and bilateral development partners.

Last week, Ministry of International Cooperation, in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), released a short film on the Creative Mediterranean project under the Global Partnerships Narrative, which is the third pillar of economic diplomacy.