By: Islam Fadl
Cairo – Mubasher: Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have secured a total banking funding of EGP 146 billion under the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) initiative, chairman of Banque Misr, Mohamed El-Etreby, said.
The CBE has offered banks many incentives to finance the SME sector including requiring lenders to allocate at least 20% of their credit portfolio to SMEs, El-Etreby added during a workshop organised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) in Cairo on Monday.
Under the initiative, banks offer SMEs soft loans with interest rates of 5% and 7%, he noted.
SMEs contribute 33% to the gross domestic product (GDP) of developing countries, while their contribution to GDP reaches 59% in developed countries, he indicated.
