Gov’t and World Bank commit to raise minerals’ contribution to GDP to 6% by 2030 and mineral exports to USD 9.8 bn by 2040

Egypt now has World Bank money behind its mining plans: The Petroleum Ministry and the World Bank Group launched a national compact on Sunday committing Egypt to lift minerals’ share of GDP to 6% by 2030, up from under 1% currently, and to reach USD 9.8 bn in mineral exports by 2040, according to statements from the World Bank and the ministry.

Egypt is one of eight countries in the program, launched in Bangkok on 16 October, and the World Bank Group is raising its global mining support fivefold to USD 19 bn over the next five years through its own lending, International Finance Corporation (IFC) investment, and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) guarantees. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will help with governance and capacity.

Why it matters: The Bank is not doing the technical work. The aerial survey is contracted to Spain’s Xcalibur and site studies go to geological consultancies. What it brings is money and credibility the state cannot give itself: lending, IFC investment, MIGA guarantees, and a GDP target a lender can hold it to. Mining usually stalls on the gap between finding a deposit and paying for a mine, and a monitored target is what narrows that gap.

IN CONTEXT- That money sits behind reforms Egypt has already made. The 2019-2020 overhaul traded production-sharing for royalties and tax capped at 20%. This year’s rules cut the state’s minimum project stake to 10% from 25%, trimmed exploration rents by up to 60%, and set 30-day approval clocks. The system meant to turn that into output is the open-sector round the Mineral Resources and Mining Industries Authority launched on 10 June: blocks stay open, and the first offer on one opens a 30-day counteroffer window. In its first three months, 335 blocks drew 403 offers from 119 companies, 14 of them foreign. The 6% target isn’t new either: the Petroleum Ministry has said 5-6% by 2030 for a year, and the compact closes the range to a flat 6%.

Water works

The Higher Committee for Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Affairs cleared tenders for seven projects at its meeting on Sunday, led by two large seawater desalination plants for Suez and Port Said, according to a Cabinet statement. The Suez plant is sized at 1 mn cbm / d over two phases and will supply Suez and the Suez Canal Economic Zone during phase one and the New Capital during phase two. Port Said gets a 900k cbm / d central plant serving Port Said and several areas of Ismailia.

The committee also approved four industrial wastewater treatment plants (Amreya and Abu Rawash at 20k cbm / d each, Wadi El Natrun at 15k cbm / d, El Raswa in south Port Said at 35k cbm / d), the operating rights to the Hadayek El Assema transformer station and its networks, and the Supply Ministry’s contract with the X Trace consortium to build a system that tracks strategic commodities.

IN CONTEXT- Most of the package was already on the Finance Ministry’s books. A government document seen last month listed 16 water and power PPP projects worth USD 3.08 bn: four desalination plants worth USD 2.68 bn (87% of the total), the four industrial wastewater plants, a USD 150 mn sludge plant at Abu Rawash, a USD 23.5 mn water-recycling plant at Mostorod, and five electricity substations. Six of those are the projects approved on Sunday; the other ten were not addressed, and the Hadayek El Assema station and the X Trace system were not in that pipeline at all.

Why it matters: Egypt is funding its water gap with private money rather than sovereign guarantees. Desalination capacity has grown from about 84k cbm / d in 2014 to more than 1 mn in 2026, and the 2050 target is 8.85 mn cbm / d, requiring about USD 8.5 bn in capital spending plus over USD 800 mn a year in operations and maintenance, according to the World Bank. The state now offers land at no cost and long-term water purchase contracts instead of a full backstop. Those contracts still leave the government exposed if the EGP, energy prices, or demand move. The desalination program has already missed deadlines it set for December 2025 and January 2026.

Mapped out

The Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company (Gupco) signed a contract with SLB (formerly Schlumberger) to roll out a 1k sq km ocean-bottom node (OBN) seismic survey across its central and southern Gulf of Suez concessions starting next month, the Petroleum Ministry said in a statement. Executed alongside UAE partner Dragon Oil, it will be the largest OBN survey in the basin, aimed at mapping new oil frontiers and lowering exploration risk to raise domestic production.

Why it matters: Gupco drilled five exploratory wells between 2022 and 2026 using OBN data from an earlier survey phase, with an 80% success rate compared with about 25% from 2017 to 2022, the statement adds.

The ministry is expanding seismic work elsewhere as well. A survey of over 100k sq km in the southern Western Desert is currently underway, another of about 110k sq km near the Libyan border is also in preparation, and Egas is working with an SLB-Viridien alliance on an eastern Mediterranean program targeting 95k sq km.