The World Bank In Egypt

Egypt, classified as a lower middle-income country, possesses significant potential to leverage its existing agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors, a large domestic market, and strategic geographic location as a gateway to Africa, Asia, and Europe. These factors can be harnessed to attract both foreign and domestic investments.

Egypt is pursuing macroeconomic stabilization and structural reforms, supported by the IMF, the World Bank, and other development partners. External accounts remain under pressure, despite the adjustments since March 2024. This is mainly due to the scarring effect of the long-standing challenges related to the elevated public debt, sluggish exports performance, below-potential private activity and productivity, as well as the ongoing implications of the Middle East conflict, notably on the Suez Canal. 

Growth is forecast to increase from 2.4 percent in FY24 to 3.8 percent, 4.2 percent and 4.6 percent in FY25, FY26 and FY27, respectively, driven by increased private consumption due to easing inflation and higher private investment. Risks however are tilted to the downside, if the ongoing shifts in global trade policy contribute to international supply chain disruptions and uncertainty that may hurt investor sentiment.  The budget deficit is projected to surge to 7.2 percent of GDP in FY25 from 3.6 percent in FY24, due to higher interest payments and a decline in non-tax revenues, compared to the previous year which had benefited from one-time revenues generated by the Ras El Hekma deal. While the government debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to decline in line with the projected resumption of fiscal consolidation, contingent liabilities remain a concern as they have increased from 28.7 percent at end-January 2023 to 34.0 percent at end-June 2024.

External financing requirements remain substantial, with upcoming external debt obligations in addition to the commitment to repay the arrears to international oil companies. The current account deficit is projected to widen further in FY25 due to higher gas imports, and a sluggish recovery of Suez Canal receipts. The recent drop in international oil and gas prices should help ease external account pressures, but this may be counterbalanced by the potential subsequent decline in remittances (mostly from Egypt’s diaspora in oil-exporting Gulf economies). The IMF financing, the recent sovereign Eurobond issuance, and other sources of international financing would help the country meet its near-term commitments. 

Accelerating structural reforms to create a conducive environment for the private sector, to strengthen institutions and macro-fiscal stability, and to advance human development are all critical for productivity growth and improved socioeconomic outcomes.

Last Updated: Apr 25, 2025

The World Bank Group’s FY 2023-2027 Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for Egypt lays out the World Bank’s current strategy in the country.

The CPF aligns with the Government of Egypt’s Sustainable Development Strategy, “Egypt Vision 2030,” and the National Climate Change Strategy 2050.

The CPF builds upon a comprehensive set of World Bank analytics, including the Systematic Country Diagnostic, the Country Private Sector Diagnostic, and the Country Climate and Development Report.

The CPF works towards three high-level outcomes:

1. More and better private sector jobs: through supporting the creation of an empowering environment for private sector-led investments and job opportunities as well as creating a level playing field for the private sector.
2. Enhanced human capital outcomes: through supporting the provision of inclusive, equitable and improved health and education services as well as effective social protection programs.
3. Improved resilience to shocks: through strengthened macroeconomic management, and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

The CPF also aims to strengthen Egypt’s role in regional integration through enhanced regional trade and greater connectivity in infrastructure, transport, energy, and labor. Through the CPF the World Bank will also continue to support Egypt’s ambitions to be a leader for the climate mitigation and adaptation agenda in the region, following its presidency of COP27.

Additionally, the CPF integrates two cross-cutting themes—governance and citizen engagement, and women’s empowerment— across programs.

The CPF is being  implemented jointly by the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC, a member of the World Bank Group), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA, a member of the World Bank Group), building on the three institutions’ current portfolios and adopting a flexible approach to lending. The CPF is being  supported through a financial envelope of US$7 billion in lending (US$1 billion per year from IBRD and about US$2 billion during the entire CPF period from IFC), in addition to guarantees from MIGA. Partnerships remain a crucial component of the strategy.

Last Updated: Apr 25, 2025

• The "Generating Resilience, Opportunities, and Welfare for a Thriving Egypt" Development Policy Financing (DPF) operation with the Government of Egypt was approved in June 2024 for US$500 million. This budget support operation is designed to address Egypt's immediate economic challenges while advancing structural reforms aligned with the country’s development priorities and national strategies. Specifically, it aims to enhance economic competitiveness and improve the business environment to foster private sector growth, strengthen macroeconomic and fiscal resilience, and support Egypt's green transition. This DPF is the first in a series of three programmatic operations. Key reforms under this operation include: strengthening the governance framework for state-owned enterprises by establishing a legal foundation for the State Ownership Policy; empowering the Egyptian Competition Authority to combat anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions; enhancing domestic revenue mobilization through accurate payroll tax assessments; reducing losses in electricity distribution; improving climate adaptation capacity and the financial sustainability of the water and sanitation sectors; scaling up renewable energy; and creating a regulatory framework for a voluntary carbon credit market. This operation will contribute to creating sustainable jobs and building resilience to climate change, both of which are crucial for the prosperity of Egypt's citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable.

• The Bank has supported the government in designing and scaling up social safety net programs under the Strengthening Social Safety nets Project (US$900 million, including additional financing). The project supported government efforts to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the Takaful and Karama Cash Transfer Program (TKP), implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS). It also piloted productive inclusion and graduation models in eight governorates under the "FORSA" program. The support continues through a US$500 million loan under the “Takaful and Karama Cash Transfer Expansion and Systems Building Project”, which supports efforts to increase the coverage and effectiveness of TKP, expand its social registry to support effective targeting of social protection programs, and enhance access of the poor and vulnerable to economic inclusion opportunities through microcredit. As of December 2024, 5.2 million households are receiving cash transfers, including 4.6 million households under Takaful and Karama.  

• The Upper Egypt Local Development Program (US$500 million) is improving local government capacity for quality infrastructure and service delivery to citizens and local firms in four of Egypt’s poorest governorates, Qena, Sohag, Minya and Assiut, which have a combined population of around twenty million inhabitants. Citizens in 20 cities, 400 villages and 2970 hamlets have benefited from the expansion and improvement of municipal services and infrastructure. This includes water and sanitation, local markets, vocational areas, local roads, public spaces, and solid waste management. More than 50,000 businesses have benefited from upgraded infrastructure and services as well as support through 12 cluster programs focusing on handicrafts, agribusiness, and other sectors.  8.2 million citizens, 48% of them women, have benefitted from 5,130 infrastructure projects under the program. 

• The Emergency Food Security and Resilience Support Project's (US$500million) emergency response measures, during the period of December 2022 to February 2023, played a crucial role in addressing the country’s shortfall in wheat imports and ensuring the Bread Subsidy Program's uninterrupted operation for the benefit of the poor and vulnerable. The project also supports national efforts to reduce post-harvest losses in the wheat supply chain by upgrading, expanding and establishing climate-resilient wheat silos. In cooperation with the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade, the project began expanding and rehabilitating nine grain silo storage complexes strategically located near road, rail and river transportation routes in Upper Egypt. In collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, progress is being made in seed multiplication and production capacity enhancement at the Sakha Agricultural Research station. 

• The Sustainable Rural Sanitation Services Program (US$850 million, with US$300 million co-financing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), aims to bring sanitation access to about 1.73 million people in highly polluted villages and satellites of Sharkia, Dakahliya, Beheira, Menoufia, Damietta and Gharbia governorates in the Nile Delta, through a complete sanitation chain from household connections connected to functioning  wastewater treatment facilities. The program empowers and incentivizes local water and sanitation companies to deliver effective, inclusive and accountable decentralized services. Currently over a million people already having access to improved sanitation services. Also six  water and sanitation companies, serving 34 million citizens, have significantly enhanced their performance. 

• The Inclusive Housing Finance Program (US$1 billion, including Additional Finance) aims to improve the affordability of formal housing for low-income households in Egypt and to strengthen the Social Housing and Mortgage Finance Fund’s capacity to design policies and coordinate programs in the social housing sector. The program is a top priority for the Egyptian authorities, with an 81% disbursement ratio. Since program inception, over 613,000 subsidies have been delivered to low-income households across Egypt’s 27 governorates.  This has contributed to greater social and youth inclusion. Over 25% of the beneficiaries are women (with 90% of women beneficiaries being first-time borrowers), 70% are below the age of 40 and 18% are below the age of 30. In addition, 65% of beneficiaries are first time borrowers, having never engaged with a financial institution prior to the initiation of this program. The program is also piloting the inclusion of green building initiatives in social housing, with the aim of certifying 55,000 units as green under national and international certification standards (including IFC EDGE). So far, over 26,000 units have been green certified.

• The Transforming Egypt’s Healthcare System Project  (US$530 million) is designed to enhance healthcare services and address public health challenges in Egypt. Its objectives include improving healthcare service quality, boosting demand for health and family planning services, combating Hepatitis C, and providing a rapid response to crises or emergencies. Notably, the project backed the "100 Million Healthy Lives" campaign, which screened over 53 million individuals for Hepatitis C and other noncommunicable diseases, leading to the treatment of approximately 1.2 million Hepatitis C patients. Initiatives such as the National Community Health Worker Campaign, the Al Wissam Initiative, and the Visiting Doctors Program have been instrumental in raising the national contraceptive prevalence rate from 58% in 2018 to 66% in 2022. The project also supports secondary and tertiary level initiatives to improve the quality and timeliness of surgical care, as well as address shortages of medical goods and supplies throughout Egypt.

• The Supporting Egypt’s Universal Health Insurance System (UHIS) Project (US$400 million) was approved in June 2020. The project supports Egypt to implement the new UHIS, as envisioned in the Universal Health Insurance Law passed in 2018. This includes Phase I of its rollout in six governorates: Port Said, Suez, Ismailia, South Sinai, Luxor and Aswan. The governorates are home to about six million people, close to 6% of Egypt’s total population.  The program has been rolled out in five of the six Phase 1 governorates, enrolling over 3.1 million people, inclusive of over half a million vulnerable and poor population benefiting from Government subsidy on the UHIS program. A national quality accreditation standard has also been developed, and is being implemented, with over 322 providers accredited and contracted to provide services.  

• In April 2019, the World Bank approved the Catalyzing Entrepreneurship for Job Creation Project (US$200 million) which aims to create jobs and improve economic opportunities for Egyptians, with a focus on women and youth. This project provides a comprehensive package of financial (debt financing and equity investments) and non-financial support to traditional MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises), innovative startups, and high growth firms. The project has created more than 400,000 jobs and supported more than 200,000 beneficiaries — of whom 40% are women and 40% are youths. 

• The Supporting Egypt Education Reform Project (US$500 million) supports the government in improving teaching and learning conditions in public schools. To improve the school readiness of the youngest learners, the project supported the Ministry of Education and Technical Education in conducting diagnostic studies and developed a new quality assurance system for kindergartens  to guide quality enhancement across 35 percent of kindergartens  in Egypt. Support has been provided to develop and roll out training modules to improve teaching practice for over 35,000 kindergarten teachers. To enhance teaching and learning the project has supported the ministry in the development of performance standards for teachers and the development of a continuous professional development framework for Grade 1-6 teachers and supervisors with a recent roll out of developed teacher training modules to over 100,000 teachers nationwide. 

• The Railway Improvement and Safety for Egypt, RISE, Project (US$440 million) was approved in March 2021, complemented by a US$241 million contribution from the Egypt National Railways (ENR). The project will modernize the railway signaling along the Alexandria-Cairo-Nag Hammadi corridor of the ENR and help improve safety at select stations and junctions using a safe systems approach, which will include gender, citizen engagement and disability considerations. The project will introduce reforms, using performance-based funding, in accordance with best international practice, to support ENR to deliver high quality services at a lower cost through the adoption of public service obligation and multi-annual infrastructure contracts. An estimated 1.4 million daily users of the railways will be able to rely on a safer and more reliable service. 

• The Cairo Alexandria Trade Logistics Development Project (US$400 million) was approved in September 2022, complemented by a US$ 598 million contribution from the Egypt National Railway.. The project will improve the performance and support the decarbonization of the logistics and transport sectors in the Alexandria–6th October–Greater Cairo Area railway corridor. The project includes developing and adopting a transparent railway Infrastructure Access Charging scheme for the Egyptian railway network to attract private sector participation; developing a regulatory framework including identifying the detailed scope and responsibilities of a railway regulator and the associated governance framework; and identifying and developing additional rail‐friendly policies to increase traffic on the railway network.

• The Greater Cairo Air Pollution Management and Climate Change Project (US$200 million) supports investments and capacity development that contribute to reducing air pollution and climate change emissions in Greater Cairo that are expected to reduce the burden of air pollution on health and on the economy. The project is helping develop an integrated climate and air quality management plan to guide future actions. Larger scale investment activities are focused on building responsiveness and resilience into institutions and systems, with an emphasis on the two priority sectors of waste management and public transport. The project supports investments to eliminate a large source of waste pollution while making new investments to modernize waste management systems to reduce final waste disposal requirements and promote a higher re-use of waste.  The project is also financing low/no emission e-bus transport fleet models.

Last Updated: Apr 25, 2025