The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) last week signed an agreement over the supply of metal detectors with Benha Electronic Industries, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Military Production. According to Yehia Abu El-Fotouh, the NBE’s vice president, this agreement is the first of its kind in Egypt’s banking sector, which targets the usage of products manufactured from locally produced raw materials.
He added that the bank is keen to make use of good products entirely manufactured or assembled with high local component rates. Products will be technically evaluated to ensure the quality and validity of the required purposes and will be given a priority over similar imported products.
The bank has been obtaining its entire needs of electrical appliances from Egyptian factories at high specifications, which are better than Chinese and European products, according to Abu El-Fotouh.
He pointed out that the bank is stipulating that the supplied products be Egyptian-made, and that it will only buy locally assembled cars with local components exceeding 40%.
Abu El-Fotouh said that he is looking forward to see Egyptian institutions follow the same policy and rely on local products manufactured by Egyptian companies and by national skilled labour. This will create new job opportunities, reduce unemployment, improve people’s living standards, reduce dependence on imported goods, and achieve the targeted economic development.
El-Haggar expected that the bank will expand its reliance on Egyptian products to cover the bank’s needs in many fields, including tracking devices. He said that the bank is currently using solar energy to supply some of the bank’s branches with electric power and pump the excess energy to the national electricity grid to be deducted from the bank’s electricity consumption costs.
He said that more than 17 headquarters use solar power. Besides, the escalators of the new pedestrian bridge the bank has completed on the Nile Corniche also use solar energy.
He added that the bridge will be ready for operation in the coming days and will be available to residents of Bulaq Abul Ela and Wikalet El Balah.
