Egypt is open for business. That’s the message Investment and International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr plugged in an interview with Bloomberg’s David Westin (watch, runtime 4:29). "We’re rebranding Egypt, improving the business environment, and making sure that more investments come in from the US and other partnering countries," she said. The new Investment Act now in the House of Representatives’ pipeline and amendments to the Capital Markets Act are key legislative drivers behind the rebranding, Nasr said.

Nasr said she is finalizing the disbursement of the third tranche of a USD 3 bn WorldBank loan, a process she said could take up to four months. The minister said the loan will be used to back opportunities in energy and manufacturing, she said.

Bloomberg’s Yousef Gamal El-Din then brought a regional analyst in to note that for Egypt, thedevil is in the implementation. Nasser Saidi (Twitter) is the former Lebanese economy minister and ex-Lebanese central banker who went on to become chief economist and head of external relations at DIFC. Now in private practice, he runs the eponymous Nasser Saidi & Associates and was brought on to say that it’s one thing to pass new laws, another to implement them. The key is to see how investor respond to the measures, he said, tipping his hat to Nasr, who he said is a “professional. … it’s always very encouraging to have a professional.” On Egypt’s economy as a whole, Saidi says we’re now at the start of the upswing in the J-curve. (Watch, 4:04)

Nasr’s appearance on Bloomberg comes as part of a media blitz that began immediately after IMF and World Bank spring meetings to support her ministry’s “global investment promotion campaign to highlight Egypt’s value proposition to global public market and strategic investors as the country continues to roll-out an ambitious economic reform program.”

Touching base with the World Bank… At the meetings, Nasr met with World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim on supporting the private sector and attracting more foreign investment, according to a ministry statement. Kim “commended the government’s economic program and the progress made during a short period of time, in addition to improving the business climate and taking the procedures necessary to attract further foreign investments,” the statement read. Nasr also highlighted opportunities in the Suez Canal economic zone and the new administrative capital in a sit-down Keiko Honda, EVP at the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. The agency is interested in supporting investment in Egypt over the coming three years, Honda said.

…and top New York-based investors. Nasr has been in the Big Apple the past couple of days, where EFG Hermes and ABANA hosted an institutional investor roundtable for Nasr to introduce her to “leading figures in the US investment community,” said ABANA Chairperson Mona Aboelnaga Kanaan in a statement (pdf). (The ministry’s statement on the same appearance is here.) While in New York, Nasr also discussed investment in petrochemicals and renewable energy with the Export-Import Bank of the United States deputy vice president Hala El Mohandes. Nasr also met with Mourad Wahba, director of the UNDP’s regional bureau for the Arab states.

Among the other meetings on an exhausting schedule: Discussion of sanitation, energy and transport projects with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. A mission from the AIIB is set to visit Egypt, the ministry said in a statement. Nasr also re-opened talks on a USD 1.5 bn loan for development in Sinai from the Saudi Fund for Development. Talks on the second tranche of the loan had been on hold since January, after a court blocked the transfer to Saudi control of the Red Sea islands Tiran and Sanafir.

(And speaking of ABANA, we’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall for its 2017 US-MENATech Summit, held yesterday. Check out ABANA’s Twitter feed for highlights.)