Banque du Caire seeks to become the strongest bank operating in the Egyptian market in the field of small- and medium-sized enterprises financing (SMEs), according to Mounir El-Zahid, CEO and chairperson of the bank.
El-Zahid said that the bank has considerable experience in financing these projects. It has created a separate department for SMEs, trained a staff of 150 employees for marketing these projects, and set aside special units at its branches to serve customers of that sector.
“Banque du Caire is one of the strongest retail banking providers in Egypt,” El Zahid pointed out, highlighting the bank’s services of car loans, personal business loans—which is financed through a EGP 1bn portfolio—and microenterprises financing services, through which the bank acquired 48% of the total size of loans granted to these projects in Egypt.
The current microenterprise portfolio at the bank stands at EGP 1.1bn and finances 116,000 projects, while only 3% of these loans are non-performing, compared to an 8% average rate of microenterprises loans unable to perform across the Egyptian market.
Rania Hassan, general manager of Banque du Caire’s treasury, said that the size of the bank’s portfolio for investing in treasury bills and bonds amounted to EGP 33bn at the end of 2015, with an increase of 14% from 2014.
She explained that these investments contributed to 48% of the bank’s net income during 2015.
Mohamed Ragaay, head of the Direct Investment Sector, said that the bank’s investment portfolio amounts to EGP 1.2bn across companies, funds, securities, and bonds.
He noted that the bank contributes to 28 companies and has recently dropped investments worth EGP 8bn as they were not returning any economic value.
