The Egyptian government represented by the Ministry of Investment, took the lead in developing the ESG index in Egypt to encourage companies to be more transparent and to disclose their governance, social and environmental practices more clearly to increase their competitive advantage.

The index is being developed by a consortium of Standard & Poor's, CRISIL and KLD. Standard & Poor's will assist the Egyptian Institute of Directors (EIOD) in partnership with the Egyptian Stock Exchange to develop, calculate, publish and maintain an index comprised of a capitalization weighted list of socially responsible companies which are publicly listed for trading on the exchange. The ESG Index should be launched by the end of December 2009.

The index is based both on quantitative factors as well as qualitative ones. Through the process, environmental, social and corporate governing factors will be translated into a series of scores measuring securities in the universe of publicly traded Egyptian companies.