The Central Bank of Egypt launched an initiative Monday designed to provide loans to medium-sized companies operating in industrial and agricultural sectors.
The loans will be allocated for the purchase of machines and equipment to expand production capacity, and will have a decreasing interest rate initially set at 7%.
According to the CBE’s statement, the initiative aims to grant medium and long-term soft loans to finance machinery, equipment and production lines. The expected sales volume of these purchases ranges from EGP 20m to EGP 100m.
The CBE’s loan programme provides for a 10-year repayment period. Applicants can apply for one loan package and may receive a maximum of EGP 20m from one bank.
The CBE has allocated EGP 5bn for its new loan programme, a figure it will make available to banks in March 2016.
The initiative comes alongside a series of others taken by the CBE—in coordination with the Egyptian state’s general policy framework to support small and medium sized enterprises— to support the manufacturing and agriculture.
