Earlier this week, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hossam Moghazi met with Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb to report on the latest developments in the Tripartite Technical Committee meeting on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Last week, a two-day meeting beginning on 22 July in the Sudanese capital Khartoum of the Tripartite Technical Committee of the GERD ended with little agreement. The meeting, extended for a third day in an attempt to solve points in dispute, took place between Moghazi, Sudanese Minister of Water Resources and Electricity Moataz Moussa, and Ethiopian Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Alamayo Tigno.

The committee began a review of the proposed technical and financial tenders submitted by the French BRL Group and the Dutch Deltares Company, selected to conduct studies on the social, financial and hydraulic impacts of the GERD on Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.

It was also supposed to decide on two points in dispute and the reservations put forward by the Egyptian party to the proposals.

Moghazi announced in a press conference that the committee had reached agreement on some of the technical issues, while others would be postponed to the eighth ministerial meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on 20-21 August.

“Both companies have submitted technical studies to Sudan and Ethiopia focusing on the impact of the GERD on Egypt’s water resources,” he said.

Moghazi said the meeting, held in an atmosphere of mutual understanding, discussed issues from the previous meeting held in Cairo last month regarding the potential impact of the GERD on the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan.

This was in addition to the implementation of the technical studies according to the timetable agreed in the roadmap approved by the three ministers.

Khaled Wassef, a spokesman for the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, said that Egypt had raised points regarding the participation of the two companies and their technical views.

“Seventy per cent of the work has been assigned to the French company, while the remaining 30 per cent has been given to the Dutch company, which has objected to this arrangement,” he said.

According to Wassef, Egypt is in favour of the Dutch company, as it has previously awarded it several missions. “Egypt has also made its reservations known regarding the mathematical models provided by the two companies,” he said, adding that resolving all the points in dispute and agreeing on the finer details could take time.

“These meetings will decide the future of two nations, and officials cannot be hasty in any decisions they take. They have to be cautious because it is very difficult to revoke any decision once it has been made,” Wassef said.

On the sidelines of the Tripartite Technical Committee meeting, Sudan and Ethiopia signed a contract for an electrical line of 500 kilovolts to enable Sudan to benefit from electricity generated from the GERD.

The GERD, which is about 40 km east of the Sudanese border and will be built on the Blue Nile, is expected to generate 6,000 megawatts of hydro-electric power and will generate a reserve of 74 billion cubic metres of water.

More than 60 per cent of the dam’s construction work has been completed. Ethiopia intends to sell most of the generated power to neighbouring East African countries. Almost 59 per cent of the water that reaches Egypt originates from the Blue Nile branch of the Nile.

In May 2013, international experts in the fields of safety, water resources and the environment from Germany, France, Britain and South Africa, along with representatives from the three countries concerned, submitted recommendations after a year-and-a-half of field visits to the dam and the scrutinising of design documents and studies.

“Egypt rejected the reports and other studies submitted by the Ethiopian side. A year ago it also issued a report explaining how the dam would shrink Egypt’s 55.5 billion cubic metre share of Nile water by 12 billion cubic metres,” Wassef said.

It was last March that Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi said when signing the Declaration of Principles on the dam with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir that “the GERD represents a development project for Ethiopians, but for Egyptians it represents a constant source of worry.”