CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Sunday met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the sidelines of the G20 summit in India.
The leaders discussed ongoing and future economic cooperation initiatives plus opportunities to further increase German investment in Egypt particularly in the transport, manufacturing, and energy sectors, the president’s spokesman Ahmed Fahmy said.
Efforts to combat illegal immigration were also considered, along with regional and international issues including the conflict in Sudan and the Russia Ukraine war.
In a separate meeting on Sunday, El-Sisi held talks with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in New Delhi.
In a speech at the summit’s closing session, Egypt’s leader said: “Talking about the future prompts me to highlight the broad hopes placed on technological transformation to increase productivity and generate new jobs for growth and investment.
“However, to ensure a better future for humanity in its entirety, there is a need to bridge the huge technological gap among countries in order for technological progress not to become an additional driver of inequality.
“It is no secret that concerns have been growing for years with regard to the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on the future of employment.
“This could cause doubled negative social and economic impact on developing countries that rely on labor-intensive industries. This could also jeopardize the progress achieved in development efforts,” El-Sisi added.
Calling for multilateral cooperation on global issues, he said: “We need to promptly address existing challenges before they exacerbate and cause crises that are hard to resolve.
“There is an urgent need to address the debt problem of developing countries, which has taken on dangerous dimensions as a result of the high burdens of debt service, not only in low-income countries but also in middle-income countries.
“The issue requires prompt and decisive resolutions to prevent the outbreak of a global debt crisis.
“Our commitment to the sustainable development agenda and the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change requires us to ensure the availability of the necessary financing and improve the international financing system and the practices of multilateral development banks.
“This can be achieved by boosting their lending capacity, particularly through providing concessional financing, while ensuring that climate finance will not come at the expense of development finance.
“In Egypt’s capacity as COP27 chair, I would like to reiterate the importance of providing the means for implementation, in terms of funding, through the fulfilment of the developed countries’ commitments, in addition to the transfer of technology,” El-Sisi added.
