The Export Development Bank aims to increase its small and midsize enterprises’ portfolio to between EGP 4bn and EGP 5bn in 2019 in the framework of the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) initiative launched in January to support these projects, according to Ahmed El-Menshawy, the bank’s head of the customer service team of the mortgage finance management.
A few days ago, during his participation in the real-estate financing seminar hosted by the Egyptian Banking Institute, El-Menshawy said that the mortgage portfolio of the bank currently amounts to about EGP 10m and was granted to finance 60 of the middle-income customers.
He added that the bank aims to increase the size of that portfolio to EGP 50m by the end of June 2017, to 200 customers. It also aims to increase it to EGP 250m, pointing out that the bank did not participate yet in social housing funding.
The bank aims to increase its role in supporting the export sector in the coming period because of its important role in providing the country with foreign exchange, according to El-Menshawy.
He said that the bank is currently aiming to coordinate with both, the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the CBE, to support exporters as well as to provide loans to them at a low-interest in order to help them increase the size of their exports.
He said that the bank is currently studying the signing of a protocol of cooperation with the General Authority of the Suez Canal Economic Zone to finance projects in that region.
In terms of the impact on the bank of the decision to float the pound, El-Menshawy said that the bank benefited from this decision, as it increased the bank’s returns in dollars by exporters who deal with it, which helped the bank to meet the demands of its clients in foreign exchange.
