Dr. Hala H. Elsaid was sworn in as Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development on December 22, 2019. Prior to this appointment, she served as the Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform between February 2017 and December 2019. Dr. Elsaid who also serves as Chairman of Egypt’s Sovereign Wealth Fund is a prominent Economist and Academic Figure, recognized as the Best Arab Minister by the Arab Government Excellence Award in November 2020.

During her tenor, she led the implementation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy (Egypt Vision 2030) in partnership with bilateral and multilateral stakeholders, private sector and civil society in line with the UN Sustainable Development Strategy and the Africa 2063 Agenda. In 2021, Dr. Elsaid
initiated the National Structural Reform Program with macro-sectoral reforms focusing on seven priority sectors that are labor intensive and have significant contribution in achieving economic growth and prosperity, supporting the transition to a green and circular economy. As Minister of Planning and Economic
Development, she launched several programs for capacity building, gender inclusion and youth empowerment including the Women in Leadership Positions Program, the Leadership for Government Excellence Program and Rowad 2030 which aims to enable youth and support entrepreneurship and job creation.

She encourages the effective monitoring and evaluation of all policies and initiatives taking place to promote sustainable development through the development of policy trackers linked to the Sustainable Development Goals and the adoption of the National Strategy for Development of Statistics, to ensure
administrative decisions are evidence based. In addition, she launched several academic contributions that include a wide range of internationally acclaimed research papers, studies and reports on various economic topics, most notably studies on financial and banking reform, international finance, privatization and
economic reform, including the first Financing Sustainable Development in Egypt report, the first of its kind FfD report as well as Egypt’s Human Development Report in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and a manual for Gender-Responsive Sustainable Development Planning.