The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (MSMEDA) provided EGP 3.7bn in funding to 124,000 small and micro businesses from January to November 2020, according to Minister of Trade and Industry, and MSMEDA Executive Director Nevine Gamea.
The funding helped create a total of 195,000 job opportunities, Gamea said.
She added that EGP 119m was pumped into the implementation of infrastructure and community development projects in various governorates. These projects aimed to provide the appropriate environment for establishing and expanding small and micro enterprises, and to assist in the employment of seasonal workers.
The minister said that Upper Egypt is foremost in the agency’s concerns, with the region obtaining 46% of the total funding for small and micro projects. The financing went towards providing job opportunities for citizens, and to encourage them to turn to self-employment.
She added that all MSMEDA branches nationwide have never halted their services despite the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), as the agency’s small enterprises service complexes succeeded in providing more than 27,000 services to clients. This included the issuance of final and temporary licences for projects, the issuance of national ID cards, as well as providing services relating to commercial registration, tax cards, and various other services.
Gamea said that the authority has successfully provided a package of non-financial services, which it also developed to ensure they were provided electronically.
Over 7,000 young Egyptians have benefited from MSMEDA-provided training courses on entrepreneurship, with more than 2,000 also registering at government agencies, and who have succeeded in winning tenders amounting to EGP 186.8m.
A total of 277 integration deals between projects have also been implemented, with the deals amounting to EGP 14m. A further 274 projects have been implemented involving public and private companies, which achieved sales of EGP 6.2m.
In addition, 4,634 technical support services were provided for small agricultural projects in the field of agricultural production and industrialisation. More than 8,000 customers benefited from the industrial project development services, while the incubation projects succeeded in incubating 86 new projects.
A total of 145 new projects were registered on the Small Enterprises platform, to help them market their products. This came in addition to the agency organising 67 exhibitions, in which 1,977 exhibitors participated, and who achieved sales of more than EGP 79m.
