By: Islam Fadl
Cairo – Mubasher: Banque du Caire has injected EGP 6 billion worth of funding into small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) during the first nine months of 2019, the bank’s head of SME banking sector Nader Saad told Mubasher.
The lender’s SME funding portfolio accounted for EGP 3 billion, or 17.6%, of the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) SME funding initiative, with plans to reach 20% by December, Saad added.
In 2016, the CBE launched an initiative to finance SMEs, requiring banks to allocate at least 20% of their credit portfolios to SMEs.
It is noteworthy that during the first half of 2019, the bank’s profit before taxes surged to EGP 2.5 billion, up from EGP 1.91 billion in H1-18.
