French Agency secures €40mn Sovereign Loan for Power Plant in Upper Egypt

The French Development Agency will provide a 40 million euros sovereign loan to finance a power plant in Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt, France’s Minister of Finance Michel Sapin told Ahram Online at Egypt’s conference in Sharm El-Sheikh on Friday.

“The French firms I talked to are now ready to invest in Egypt,” Sapin told Ahram Online’s reporter at the event, adding that 30 large French companies were present at the conference.

“This conference marks the return of Egypt on the economic and financial world map,” he said.

Concerns about Egypt’s security situation did not rank high in French investors’ considerations, the minister implied.

“They are not afraid of security issues; there is no such thing as absolute security but the situation in Egypt is definitely improving,” said Sapin.

“Corruption is of course an issue as in many places and needs tougher legislation to fight it,” said Sapin.

Egypt climbed 20 spots in Transparency International’s corruption index for 2014 from the previous year, but still ranks 94th out of 175 countries.

The government has recently passed a series of legislative reforms to tackle bureaucratic ineficiency and lay clearer rules for the allocation of state-owned land.