The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA) has increased its performance significantly since President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi took office in July 2014, according to its CEO Bassel Rahmi. He stated that the agency has provided EGP 48.3bn in funding for 1.9 million small and micro projects, creating and maintaining more than 3 million jobs.
The report “The New Republic: Years of Challenges and Achievements” revealed the distribution of the agency’s funds across different regions and sectors. The Southern provinces received the largest share of 47%, followed by the Northern provinces with 36%, the urban provinces with 12%, and the border provinces with 5%. The report also showed that 45% of the funds supported female entrepreneurs, while 55% went to male entrepreneurs.
The agency allocated EGP 25bn for micro-projects, benefiting around 1.713 million projects and providing 2.53 million job opportunities. Additionally, EGP 23.3 billion was disbursed for around 192,716 small projects, generating around 481,347 job opportunities.
The report highlighted the agency’s achievements in Upper Egypt, where it disbursed EGP 22.5bn for small and micro-projects, providing 1.5 million job opportunities. Moreover, the agency funded community and human development projects in Upper Egypt with EGP 2bn, creating 24.1 million workdays for irregular labor.
The agency also signed 84 agreements with development partners worth EGP 1.195bn for infrastructure projects, generating 5.225 million workdays. In the community development sector, 341 projects were funded with EGP 360.9m, resulting in 18.853 million workdays. The agency also financed projects in the fields of health, education, and environment with EGP 103.9m, EGP 99.9m, and EGP 157.01m respectively.
The report also disclosed the agency’s efforts to empower women in small and medium-sized enterprises, allocating EGP 14.7bn for 38,134 small projects and 815,059 micro-projects. Women received loans accounting for 45% of the total agency loans, providing 1.065 million job opportunities. The Southern provinces received EGP 7.9bn of women’s funding, ranking first among the provinces. Community development projects provided 18.4 million jobs for women, representing 54% of the total workdays facilitated by the agency.
The report also revealed the agency’s contribution to the “Decent Life” initiative, disbursing EGP 2.8bn for 107,300 small and micro-projects from January 2021 to October 2023, providing 183,000 job opportunities. The Southern provinces received 78.6% of the total funding under the initiative.
The agency also offered various non-financial services within the initiative from January 2021 to September 2023, including 1010 awareness seminars, 296 training courses, 2,759 final licenses, 4114 temporary licenses, and 2,069 regularization licenses. It also helped obtain 2372 tax cards, 823 commercial registrations, and 2,405 social insurance certificates.
The report also disclosed that the agency allocated EGP 3.1bn for infrastructure, community, human development, and training projects, providing 34 million workdays for irregular labor from July 2014 to October 2023. These funds were divided into EGP 2.13bn for labour-intensive infrastructure projects, EGP 816m for community development projects, and EGP 183m for training and employment projects.
During this period, the agency organized 1237 exhibitions, including 238 internal exhibitions in Cairo, 973 exhibitions in other governorates, as well as 26 international exhibitions.
