AIIB’s Annual Meetings Kick Off Monday in Sharm El-Sheikh

Egypt hosts the annual meetings of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) over two days starting in Sharm El-Sheikh.

The meetings, organized for the first time in Africa, are held under the patronage of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

Representatives from 106 countries will attend the meetings, including finance ministers and central bank presidents.

The meetings will also be attended by the representatives of 160 local and international media outlets.

During the meetings' sessions, the participants will discuss various issues, including guaranteeing international governance for the sake of across-the-border sustainable development, building partnerships to support the world's health infrastructure, and mobilizing resources to finance climate-centred activities

. Other issues to be discussed include reinforcing the private sector's role in electronic services in Asia and Africa and creating partnerships to confront world challenges.

The meetings will also address sustainable finance in infrastructure through sustainable development bonds.In addition, they will tackle mobilizing resources and providing creative finance to bridge the gap in funding infrastructure projects in the Middle East and Africa.

Furthermore, the event also includes seminars on multilateral cooperation to finance joint development projects between AIIB and Egypt.

The Egyptian Finance Minister -- and Egypt's Governor at AIIB -- Mohamed Maait, affirmed that Egypt aims to establish partnerships that achieve sustainable development by considering the current exceptional global circumstances and the needs of emerging economies.

Maait also noted that Egypt is cooperating with AIIB to build across-the-border private sector-led development partnerships, which can lead to greater bilateral development cooperation and increase AIIB's investments, which currently stand at $ 1.3 billion in Egypt.

Furthermore, he added that Egypt gives priority to investments in renewable energy and clean transport.

“Access to international finance markets has become more difficult and costly. Therefore, there are a lot of financial gaps

. Development requires huge finances, and emerging economies suffer from running up expensive bills to meet the citizens' basic needs for energy and food,” the Egyptian finance minister further explained.

Maait added that creative finance solutions represent "a lifeline" for developing countries against internal and external shocks.

He called on the private sector to take advantage of the finance opportunities offered by AIIB in several promising sectors and to form more partnerships.

“We have high hopes for benefitting from AIIB's great experience and potential to widen the scope and size of infrastructure projects since these projects represent the nerve of economic and social development,” Maait stated.

He also stressed that the Egyptian state has high hopes that international multilateral development institutions will play a more significant role in standing up to global challenges, which explains why Egypt adopts Africa's development needs in international circles.