World Bank to Give Egypt $1.5b for Sanitation

A delegation of Egyptian ministers including President Sisi are busy at work in New York, partaking at 69^th UN Conference while striking deals to help Egypt's recovery. As announced by Mostafa Madbouly, Utilities and Urban Development Minister, the World Bank has agreed to offer Egypt $1.5 billion over three years for social housing and sanitation for villages. The agreement comes at the end of a two-day visit by the minister to the United States and was officially announced on Tuesday in a press release by Madbouly.

The specifics of the deal include a soft loan and grants worth $500 million for social housing projects that will be given in installments of $100-120 million a year. Aside from housing, the deal also promises a billion dollars over three years to fund sanitation projects that will be distributed to 760 villages along the Rosetta branch of the Nile Delta, as well as along the Al-Salam Canal, which runs east of the delta and through the Sinai peninsula.

Although this loan is a good start for both projects, Madbouly stresses that $2.5 billion is needed to complete the projects, which has led the World Bank to promise to find a group of donor institutions that could make up the difference.

This is not the the first loan that Egypt has been granted from the World Bank who is currently committed to 25 projects at a cost of $4.9 billion, while establishing 43 trust funds worth $190.2 million in a variety of sectors that include energy, transport, water and sanitation, health, education, and agriculture.