The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) currently conducts negotiations with the Social Fund for Development (SFD) to sign finance agreements worth EGP 400 million to finance small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Sources said the bank targets to attract new customer segments in unofficial SME sectors and encourage them to work officially.
The total value of contracts that NBE signed with SFD reached EGP 5 billion and the bank plans to increase such value to EGP 6 billion by the end of 2013, sources added.
The bank’s direct and indirect SME finances registered EGP 8.9 billion and EGP 1.4 billion, respectively at the end of 2012. The bank raised its customer base by attracting about 9,700 new customers at the end of last December.
NBE has succeeded with a large part of its target concerning increasing the value of SME finance by EGP 4 billion by the end of FY 2012/2013, to raise the value of net outstanding loans to EGP 2 billion by the end of June 2013 after loans’ repayments.