Egypt’s cabinet approves second phase of World Bank budget support programme

Egypt’s cabinet, meeting under Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly at the government’s headquarters in the New Administrative Capital, approved a draft presidential decree on the second phase of a World Bank development policy financing programme, alongside a series of decisions on coastal management, public contracts and education.

• Coastal committee
• Contracts and textbooks

The financing agreement, signed with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development on 1 November 2026, covers the second phase of the programme titled “Development Policy Financing for Enhancing Resilience, Opportunities and Prosperity in Egypt”. The cabinet statement did not disclose the amount.

Development policy financing is one of the World Bank’s instruments for providing direct support to a country’s budget in return for agreed reforms. The second phase backs reforms in three areas: improving competitiveness and the business environment, strengthening the economy’s resilience to external shocks, and supporting the green transition.

Coastal committee

The cabinet approved a decree forming a National Higher Committee for Integrated Coastal Zone Management in the Mediterranean, to be chaired by the prime minister or his deputy, with the ministers concerned as members and the minister of local development and environment as rapporteur.

The committee will assign roles to each ministry, approve national strategies, plans and development programmes for coastal and marine areas and lakes, and settle overlapping jurisdictions on the coast through binding decisions. It will also advise on Egypt joining international and regional agreements on protecting coastal and marine areas. It will meet every three months, and its decisions will be final and binding on government bodies, within the limits of existing law.

A technical secretariat headed by the chief executive of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency will review plans from the governorates, assess major development projects planned on the coast before they go to the committee, and meet every two months. Local committees chaired by the governors of Matrouh, Alexandria, Beheira, Kafr El-Sheikh, Dakahlia, Damietta, Port Said and North Sinai will prepare plans for each governorate, review risk maps issued by the irrigation ministry, and meet monthly.

Contracts and textbooks

The cabinet endorsed the recommendations of the ministerial engineering committee, which met on 14 October, to award 26 projects to contractors for the ministries of housing and transport and the public prosecution.

It authorised the education ministry to contract with Horizon publishing to print and supply French-language textbooks for primary, preparatory and technical commercial secondary schools. The estimated print run exceeds 500,000 copies of books whose intellectual property Horizon owns, and will be paid for from the ministry’s 2026/27 budget.

Under Article 78 of Law No. 182 of 2018 on contracts concluded by public entities, the cabinet also approved requests from several bodies. They include Cairo University’s plans to complete the second phase of upgrading its dental hospital and to finish two floors of a pharmacy faculty building at its Sheikh Zayed branch; Arish University’s completion of a new computing and information faculty building in North Sinai; and the Consumer Protection Agency’s plan to design, build and equip a regional branch in Sharm El-Sheikh.