The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) has given a reprieve to customers in the tourism sector to repay the EGP 500 million debts next year instead of this month, said Yehia Abul Fotouh, head of the debt recovery and restructuring sector at NBE.
The bank has met with the shareholders of the Arab Company for Special Steel (Arcosteel) last week to reach an agreement to settle the company’s EGP 1.6 billion debt, he added. NBE presented a plan to the company to conduct total financial restructuring.
The bank’s non-performing loan portfolio reached EGP 6.5 billion at the end of last March, compared to EGP 6.2 billion at the end of 2012, registering an increase of EGP 300 million.
Abul Fotouh attributed the increase in the value of NPLs to the increase in the value of dollar which exceeded EGP 7 as the bank has bad foreign-currency debts.
