Egyptian Finance Minister: We are targeting easy mechanisms to reduce cost of green finance for African countries

Egyptian Finance Minister Mohamed Maait stressed that the risks of climate change, which are intertwined with severe global economic challenges, strongly affect the sustainability of public finances for developing and African countries, explaining that the soft green finances available so far still do not meet the great development needs of African countries. He added that green bonds and social and sustainability bonds can contribute to mobilizing part of the necessary financing from the private sector as innovative tools to bridge the huge financing gap in a way that helps build flexible and sustainable financing for African countries and emerging economies.

In a session to reduce the costs of green borrowing during the Finance Day within the activities of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, the minister said, “We are targeting facilitating mechanisms that can help reduce the cost and burdens of green finance for African countries, which is represented in facilitating liquidity and sustainability by creating an effective market for repurchasing government bills and bonds in order to provide sufficient liquidity to achieve development goals and stimulate investments in environmentally friendly projects so that the private sector has a greater role in bridging the financing gap in the African continent and we see investors’ capital directed according to sustainable and environmentally friendly returns and not just standards of risk.