Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait affirmed Egypt’s keenness to coordinate the African position by hosting a meeting of African Ministers of Finance, Economy, and Environment this September in order to reach a unified continental vision ahead of the UN Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP 27).
This came in a bilateral meeting with Malian Minister of Finance and Economy Alousseni Sanou on the side-lines of their participation in the annual meetings of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to discuss ways to enhance bilateral relations in various fields within the framework of Egyptian efforts to achieve continental integration.
The September meeting will seek to consolidate a unified African vision on issues of finance and climate, given that emerging economies and developing countries cannot bear the burdens of adapting to climate change in light of a global economic crisis represented by the unprecedented negative effects of the war in Europe.
Maait said that Egypt will adopt initiatives and ideas to present to African ministers in this meeting — which will be held in Egypt — in a way that contributes to helping African countries deal positively and flexibly with climate challenges by facilitating financing opportunities that support the transition to a green economy.
The minister also reviewed the Egyptian experience in economic reform, which resulted in achieving a positive growth rate of 3.6% and 3.3% during the coronavirus pandemic in a way that reflects the gains that the Egyptian economy has enjoyed that made it more capable of absorbing global shocks.
He also pointed out that Egypt has made great strides in modernising and digitising the financial, tax, and customs systems in a way that contributes to simplifying procedures, stimulating investment, facilitating the movement of internal and external trade, reducing the cost of the import and export process, listing the tax community more accurately, and integrating the informal economy into the official one.
Moreover, he pointed out that the ministry also succeeded in implementing a system for the advance registration of shipments (ACI) in seaports in a way that prompted it to launch this advanced system in airports. This will help reduce the time for customs release and ban the entry of bad and unidentified goods to the Egyptian market.
Furthermore, he explained that the government is continuing to develop the Government Financial Information Management System (GFMIS), the Electronic Payment and Collection System, and the Unified Treasury Account (TSA) in a sustainable manner that contributes to determining the volume of revenues and expenditures of the state’s public treasury in an instant.
This helps in estimating the country’s financial position in real time and having the ability to take the right decision at the right time. The importance of this has become clear in flexibly dealing with global economic crises.