Egypt’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (MSMEDA) is in talks with the European Investment Bank for a €60 million ($67.5 million) financing package, an official in the agency said on Tuesday.
The package will be divided as €45 million loan that would go towards financing small and micro-sized projects and €15 million grant, Medhat Massoud, MSMEDA’s head of human and social development sector, said.
“We expect to sign the final contracts within next month,” Massoud told Amwal Al Ghad.
MSMEDA, previously known as the Social Fund for Development, is an autonomous development and poverty-alleviation agency, established in 1991 with support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is an agency affiliated to Egypt’s Cabinet, designed to act as a social safety net to undertake the government’s economic reform programme by developing the MSME sector directly or through the coordination of the efforts of the different stakeholders.
