81308025-Strengthening the Green Services Portfolio of Business Service Providers in Egypt

Industrial development remains one of the most viable solutions for countries" economic progression allowing countries to focus on gaining economic competitive advantage in the global market. In developing countries similar to the Egyptian context, the path leading to industrial development often comes with significant environmental downside. Rapid industrialization, coupled with resource constraints, lack of the consumer awareness and waste management issues aggravates the environmental negative impact. Nevertheless, developing countries have a strong edge in basing their industrialization efforts on climate considerate mitigation measures to reduce environmental externalities, the need for future adaptation measures and improve their global competitive situation and inclusive growth potentials. Until recently, green manufacturing and energy efficiency practices were on the top list of the Egyptian industries priorities due to subsidized energy prices. However, following the major energy subsidy reforms and new emerging local and international climate regulations, Egypt"s industries started to seek alternative solutions to maintain their profit margins, especially the energy-intensive one. Although Egyptian industrial companies started having growing appetite in exploring greening opportunities, the topic is new to them. Certain factors such as the unclarity of regulations on policy level, potential market opportunities, the right technologies, the available financing schemes and business cases supporting their green transformation remain unclear. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to implement the project "Private Sector Innovation" (PSI). The project is now entering a follow-on commission for three years from 01/06/2024 until 30/05/2027. PSI II has a green manufacturing focus and will be implemented in partnership with public and private entities with the objective "to improve the competitive situation of the Egyptian industry in light of increasing market requirements for a green transformation of the economy". The project has an industrial greening growth focus and consists of four interconnected outputs: Output 1 aims to strengthen the technical capacities of selected public or semi-public institutions to promote the industry's competitiveness with regard to a green transformation. Output 2 aims to strategically align the financing portfolio of relevant financial system actors more strongly with a green transformation of the Egyptian industry. Output 3 aims to strengthen the range of technical service offers, particularly those offered by female-led service providers or women in consulting, to promote the competitive situation of the industry in line with the requirements of a green economic transformation. Output 4 aims to enable climate start-ups to develop and startup ecosystem actors to promote innovative business models for climate mitigation solutions, especially in the industrial sector. This assignment will be directly contributing to the implementation of output 3 with the main objective of strengthening the capacities of service providers in Egypt to offer green business development service (Green BDS) to industrial clients. Through the support provisioned to the local service providers, the ability of the Egyptian manufacturing companies to adopt green manufacturing practices as well as resource-efficient and cleaner production methods (e. g. energy recovery / efficiency, water recycling / efficiency, material recycling, waste management/ recovery, etc.) shall be enhanced. The contract intends to support the Egyptian Green BDS providers with the packages of technical assistance, business development advisory and coaching. Those service providers shall be later capable of providing consultation and advisory services to industrial companies to strengthen their competitive position with regard to the green transformation.

The major activities to be undertaken under this contract over the duration of 30 months of implementation are: - Analysis of the demand and supply of green business development services and development of the technical assistance implementation strategy. - Capacity development of relevant service providers to provide basic and advanced green advisory services for industrial SMEs and integrate green services for companies into their portfolio (e.g., consulting services on energy efficiency, development of carbon inventories or climate mitigation strategies). - Piloting the delivery of the green business development services to industrial companies (small, medium and large companies) to support them in undergoing the technical and economic feasibility of investments in more climate and environmentally friendly business models/production processes. - Additional support to females graduates with opportunities for skills development and mentorship to become consultants and work for service providers.

Target group of the assignment This tender primarily targets Green BDS providers with a track record in delivering services to industrial enterprises, both on a basic and advanced level. Those are providers that provide services related to the concept of resource-efficient and cleaner production or the environmental sustainability in a broader sense (e.g., resource-, energy-, water- efficiency / wastewater-, solid-, hazardous waste management, scaling renewable energy, climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, recycling, promoting compliance with international environmental standards e.g. ISO 14001, regional and/or international trade policy instruments e.g. CBAM , etc.).

The beneficiaries are a total of 50 small and medium-sized as well as large industrial enterprises, each with distinct service requirements based on their market exposure -either local or international.