Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation said that trilateral talks in Cairo on Monday between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have not yielded any progress.
As the Egyptian authorities noted, the discussions did not see a shift in Ethiopia's position on the large-scale project.
"The spokesperson for the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation of Egypt stated that the Cairo round of negotiations did not witness any tangible change in the Ethiopian positions," the ministry's statement read.
The statement added that Egypt continues to "exert utmost efforts" to reach, as soon as possible, a legally binding agreement on the rules for the filling and operation of the GERD that is in the interest of Egypt and to realize the mutual benefit of all three countries.
For its part, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry announced that the next round of talks between the three countries will be hosted by the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in September.
The main stumbling block of the project is that Sudan and Egypt fear it will cause water shortages in their countries, while Ethiopia considers the dam as a necessity for the country's electrification and development.
Tensions between the three African countries came to a head in the summer of 2020 when Ethiopia began filling the reservoir without coordinating with the other two nations.
Ethiopia completed the second phase of filling the reservoir in July 2021, and just over a year later, the third phase.
The next phase of infill was supposed to take place this August, but the authorities postponed that stage until August, citing the need to take into account the interests of Egypt and Sudan.
In mid-July, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed agreed to resume talks on the dam project, pledging to exert all efforts to reach an agreement within four months.