Press Release, June 16, 2000
World Bank Approves National Drainage Loan for Egypt
Contact Person:
In Egypt: Nahed El Husseini (2-02) 574 1670
Email: nelhusseini@worldbank.org
In Washington: Hanan Dowidar (1-202) 473 7199
Email: dhanan@worldbank.org
WASHINGTON, June 16, 2000--The World Bank's Board of Directors yesterday approved a loan to Egypt in the amount of US$50 million for the Second National Drainage Project.
The project aims to increase the agriculture productivity of about 800,000 feddans (340,000 hectares) of irrigated land by improving drainage conditions through evacuation of excess irrigation water with subsurface drains into existing open drains, and avoiding yield and production losses on this land, which would result if water-logging and soil salinity problems were to persist. The project is the second phase of the Government's National Drainage Program; the first phase is currently being completed under a World Bank financed project.
The project also aims at building capacity in the Egyptian Public Authority for Drainage Projects through institutional support, technical assistance and training activities provided under international donors' bilateral assistance. In addition, the project will assist in identifying and addressing the environmental issues resulting from the discharge of untreated raw industrial and domestic waste into a few open drains in the project areas.
The project is expected to benefit about 400,000 farm households. This number is based on the prevailing land ownership and cropping patterns, as most of the farmers in the project area are small holders who have an average size of land holding of 2 feddans (0.84 hectares).
The overall project cost is US$278.4 million. The World Bank loan will be disbursed as a single currency LIBOR-based loan, with a maturity of 20 years and a 5 year grace period. The loan is accompanied by counterpart financing from the Egyptian Government of US$134.8 million, and parallel financing from the German KfW (US$40 million), the European Investment Bank (US$50 million) and the Netherlands Government (US$3.6 million). Overall Bank commitments to Egypt now amount to about US$6.4 billion in support of development projects.
