Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and visiting Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz have finalized a contract for a $16-billion investment fund among several other bilateral accords.
The document was inked on Saturday, the third day of an unusually long visit by the 80-year-old Saudi monarch to Egypt.
The visit and the fund contract apparently reflect the extent of the Saudi support for Egypt’s former army chief, who engineered a coup against the country’s first democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 and rose to presidency in June 2014.
Saudi Arabia has remained a key supporter and chief financier of Egypt’s troubled economy under the Sisi administration.
![Click to see original Image in a new window](http://presstv.ir/photo/20160410/b7e07d29-9097-4edd-88b6-e10f6d87f6f4.jpg)
Since his arrival in Egypt on Thursday, King Salman and his entourage of senior Saudi officials have announced a string of investments in Egypt, as well as a massive plan to construct a bridge over the Red Sea to connect the two Arab nations.
Moreover, on the third day of the Saudi ruler’s five-day tour of Egypt on Saturday, Salman and Sisi attended the signing ceremony for a number of other deals intended to further boost Egypt’s battered economy at the historic Abdeen Palace in Cairo.
More than a dozen other accords, including a memorandum of understanding to set up an industrial zone in Egypt, were also unveiled during the meeting.
|