Basil Rahmi, CEO of the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA), has confirmed that the agency continues to provide various aspects of support to women to maximize their role in society and empower them economically and socially, by encouraging them to establish stable, productive, profitable and expandable small and micro projects, thus contributing to improving the standard of living for them and their families.
Rahmi explained in a statement, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, that the agency’s strategy in supporting and empowering women is based on providing various technical support services that enable them to develop their skills and acquire new ones. It also offers them various financing programs, which helps them to start their own projects, or expand their projects.
Rahmi added that during the period from July 2014 until the end of December 2022 (8 years), 45% of the total funds provided by the agency were directed to small and micro projects for women, with total funds amounting to EGP 13.4bn, which financed about 800,000 small and micro projects and provided nearly a million job opportunities, in addition to daily labourers, which in 8 years amounted to about 18 million work days.
He added that the agency works in a number of axes to enhance the economic and societal role of women, including providing various training and vocational services to women and girls free of charge, with the aim of helping them to self-employment, indicating that the focus is in this framework on supporting women’s production and craft blocs in the governorates, especially in the villages and hamlets in the border governorates and the governorates of Upper Egypt, as they are areas most in need of economic development.
He emphasized that MSMEDA’s support for Egyptian women does not stop at providing funds and technical services for women’s projects, as it also sponsors participation in central or local exhibitions organized by the agency or cooperating with partner agencies to organize them, as the percentage of women’s participation in local exhibitions reached about 51%, while she obtained 30% of the marketing services provided by the agency.
