KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia and Egypt have agreed to collaborate in promoting a sustained post COVID-19 pandemic recovery, specifically on vaccine cooperation.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said that an area of interest to Malaysia is Egypt's production of Sinovac vaccines locally for domestic use and for export to the rest of Africa.

"This is an avenue for us to explore collaboration in development and vaccine production between both our countries in the future," he said in his remarks during a joint press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Hassan Shoukry in conjunction with his working visit to the North African country on Sunday.

His remarks were made available to the media here.

Both ministers also discussed on mutual recognition of vaccination certificates, which is crucial in reviving tourism, business and education travel, and hope that the respective authorities on both sides will follow up with concrete negotiations in realising this.

On reinvigorating ties between the two countries, Hishammuddin has extended an invitation to Shoukry to undertake an official visit to Malaysia.

He said they also agreed to reconvene the Joint Commission Meeting (JCM) mechanism which will be co-chaired by both ministers. The last Ministerial level JCM was held in Cairo in 2008.

"We have also agreed for our Senior Officials to convene the inaugural Bilateral Consultation (BC) before Minister Shoukry's upcoming visit. The Bilateral Consultation will undertake a thorough assessment of where we are in our collaboration, explore avenues for intensification, including identifying areas of deliberation for both Ministers to agree upon," he said.

On economic cooperation, Hishammuddin said he and Shoukry agreed to intensify efforts to bring more Malaysian palm oil and palm-oil based products into Egypt's market where the country is one of the biggest importers of Malaysian palm oil in the African region.

He said Malaysia viewed Egypt as a gateway for Malaysian exports to the rest of the African region and offered the opportunity to export Egyptian goods and services to Malaysia.

"We can assist in opening the doors for Egypt to ASEAN, to capitalise on the grouping's population of over 620 Million People in Southeast Asia," he said.

He pointed out that Egypt's various economic development programmes have been impressive and Malaysia is interested in the New Administrative Capital and Suez Canal Economic Zone projects.

"I would like to thank Minister Shoukry for inviting the Malaysian private sector to participate in these prestigious and visionary projects," he said.

Hishammuddin is on a two-day working visit to Egypt starting Sunday which is his first visit to the North African country since being appointed as the Foreign Minister in 2020.

-- BERNAMA