The industrial sector accounted for 57% of the banking sector’s loans, amounting to about EGP 6.8tn in March 2024, according to the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE).
In its recent financial stability report, CBE said that the services sector accounted for 30% of the banking sector’s loans, followed by the trade sector with 8%, and agriculture with 5%.
The report revealed a decrease in the share of loans provided to the private sector to record 46.2% of the total loans granted to customers by the end of March 2024, compared to 55.3% in March 2023.
It indicated that the expansion in financing the local economy happened through increasing the loan portfolio for customers by a rate of 32.9% in 2023, compared to a rate of 32.3% in 2022.
SMEs
CBE revealed a growth in banks’ portfolios for SMEs by a rate of 394% by the end of the first quarter of 2024 compared to December 2015.
CBE said that the most prominent indicators of growth in the portfolio of MSMEs in banks were recorded from December 2020 to December 2023, as micro-enterprise financing achieved a growth of 71%.
It explained that the portfolio of small enterprises alone achieved a growth of 58%, while medium enterprise financing recorded a growth of 59% during that period.
The financing granted to Upper Egypt governorates achieved a growth of 56%, while the financing of Delta governorates recorded a growth rate of 71%, and the financing granted by banks to industrial sector activities increased by 50%, while the growth rates of agricultural sector financing reached 39%.
Personal loans
CBE revealed that personal loans in banks accounted for 79.2% of the consumer loan portfolio by the end of March 2024.
CBE said that real estate loans accounted for 9.8% of this portfolio, while credit cards accounted for 5.9%, with the percentage of car loans remaining at a low level due to the decline in demand for them, recording 5%.
Long-term loans accounted for the largest share of total loans in the banking sector with a share of 53% by the end of March 2024.
NilePreneurs Initiative
In a related context, CBE revealed the establishment and operation of 28 new centers within the NilePreneurs Initiative during the first quarter of 2024, bringing their number to 110 centers.
CBE said that 45,000 non-financial services were provided, benefiting 21,000 clients, within the initiative during the first quarter of the year. The bank pumped EGP 940m worth of financing to about 800 clients within the initiative. CBE launched the NilePreneurs initiative in February 2019, in partnership with Nile University and other Egyptian universities, and several local and international entities, to support entrepreneurship, startups, and SMEs.
According to CBE, banks have pumped EGP 6.3bn worth of financing to about 9,000 clients within the NilePreneurs initiative until the end of 2023, in addition to 430,000 non-financial services.
