The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) will provide Egypt with $1.1 billion finances during 2021. Through a virtual event, Egypt's Minister of Planning and Economic Development and Egypt's governor at the ITFC, Hala El-Saeed along with the ministers of international cooperation, petroleum and mineral resources, supply and internal trade, industry and trade, witnessed he signing of the ITFC's financing programme for Egypt. The programme is expected to provide Egypt with finances, projects, and programmes to facilitate trade, building capacities, extend corporate support, and enhance competitiveness of the external trade sectors, according to El-Saeed. The programme will also include carrying out digitalising trade operations, upgrading value chains' performance in the cotton sector in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), in addition to boosting women entrepreneurship through the ITFC's SheTrades programme, added El-Saeed. The minister expounded that the signed programme comes under the strategic partnership between Egypt and the ITFC, in light of the framework agreement inked between the two sides in 2018. Through the 2018 agreement, the ITFC provides Egypt with $3 billion over five years to both enable the country in providing basic food commodities, raw oil products; as well as enhance internal value chains, develop small and medium-sized enterprises, and develop trade. She added that Egypt ranks seventh among countries that contribute in the ITFC's capital, while ranking third among beneficiary countries of the corporation's finance allocations, with $12.7 billion. Egypt's current portfolio with the ITFC stands at $11.2 billion. The ITFC is a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDBG). Since 2008, ITFC has provided more than $51 billion to Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries, making it the leading provider of trade solutions for the member countries' needs. The ITFC's OIC supports 33 countries in the MENA region, including Egypt.
