Tuesday 13 October 2020
Last update on Tuesday, October 13, 2020 At 9:24 AM
The Egyptian government has revealed funding of 750 million euros obtained from the European Investment Bank (EIB) by the public-funded financial group, Banque Misr, to support SMEs victims of Covid-19. Since the start of 2020, this is the third intervention of its kind for the European institution.
Bank Misr, one of Egypt’s largest banking groups, has received a 750 million euros loan agreement from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to support its struggling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) clients to recover definitively from Covid-19. In particular, it will be a question of responding effectively to working capital needs in these times of low activity.
The financial terms of this facility – which has been granted since September 17th, according to an official statement – were not disclosed. This is the second EIB support for an Egyptian public bank since the beginning of 2020 with the aim of enabling the private sector to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus. On September 3rd, 2020, National Bank of Egypt (NBE) signed a loan agreement of 800 million euros with the European institution.
Another facility, but of a smaller scale (91 million euros) was granted to Banque du Caire in early 2020. The bilateral strategic partnership between Egypt and the EIB dates back to 1979. Since then, 139 projects have been financed for one amount which reached 12.6 billion euros.
The banking sector and the financing sector take an important part. In total, they received nearly 5 billion euros in financing from the EIB over the period assessed.
Source : Ecofin Agency.
