Cairo – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Egyptian Industrial Development Authority, the Egyptian National Cleaner Production Center, and the World Environment Center, has launched a pilot project that helps small and medium-sized food processing firms to conserve energy resources and increase their use of cleaner forms of energy while improving the sustainability and competitiveness of their businesses.

"Conserving energy is an important strategy for businesses seeking to control production costs,” said Mary C. Ott, USAID’s Mission Director in Egypt, which is funding the project. “This project helps small entrepreneurial firms implement and model energy-saving measures while they are building their markets and increasing jobs. This will help Egypt achieve its national goal of improving the country’s industrial energy efficiency by 20% by the year 2022 and promote economic growth."

The project supports small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to reduce their total energy costs by investing in more energy efficient equipment for manufacturing, cooling, and lighting.  It also helps SMEs to conserve energy through better insulation, leakage reduction, and better production planning and management techniques.  Such measures benefit both the environment and make firms more competitive in the global market. 

This project is one of several being implemented by USAID that focus on increasing the competitiveness of Egypt’s small and medium enterprises in the global market.  It is part of a broad and robust economic relationship that the U.S has been building with Egypt for decades.  A diverse trade and investment relationship has made the United States Egypt’s largest bilateral trading partner and a significant investor in Egypt’s future, with total investments of almost $17 billion responsible for hundreds of thousands of Egyptian jobs.  The U.S. also has significant people-to-people ties with Egypt, as 2,000 Egyptian students study in American schools, 62,000 Egyptian tourists and businesspeople visited America last year, and over 600,000 people follow the activities of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Facebook. 

Our assistance relationship is similarly robust, totaling over $30 billion from the American people since 1975 and achieving significant results that have changed the lives of Egyptians.  These include infrastructure projects that have provided water, electricity, and telephone services to nearly all of Egypt; environmental projects that have reduced lead levels in the air by 65 percent for Cairo residents; education projects that have contributed to doubling the number of girls in schools; and health projects that have led to an 82 percent reduction in infant mortality.  This year, President Obama delivered an additional $190 million in budget support to the government to support stabilizing Egypt’s economy.