By Mostafa Adel
Cairo Mubasher: Egypt's Social Fund for Development (SFD) has started talks for receiving two equal loans worth $400 million from the World Bank (WB), said SFD Secretary General Soha Soliman.
On the sideline of a conference with the African Development Bank, she told Mubasher that the first loan will be dedicated to financing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while the second one will be put into developing labor intensive industry.
Egypt further expects to receive the first $1 billion dollar tranche of $3 billion loan from the World Bank, when the House of Representatives votes for the economic reform program, including the long-delayed VAT policy, said Hafez Ghanem, World Bank’s Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa.
According to online WB data, the World Bank's Egypt loan portfolio jumped to $6.9 billion by the end of April 2016.
The Social Fund, Soha continued, granted EGP6 billion for different SMEs and is planning to raise financing by 30% during the fiscal year 2016.
Moreover, the Social Fund targets to secure EGP300 million for the youth-business-loan scheme, Gamaaty, through injecting EGP200 million in the second phase, the Secretary General concluded.
Translated by Ahmed El-Sayed Ali
