NBE’s Platinum Certificates Attract EGP 95 Bln

The National Bank of Egypt’s (NBE) platinum certificate attracted deposits of more than EGP 1 billion to the bank in the first two weeks since raising its return to 12.5%.

Sources said the platinum savings certificate tops the savings pools in the market in terms of attracting the largest value of deposits as it attracted EGP 95 billion since its issuance.

The demand for this certificate has highly increased after raising its returns which made the average daily depositing range from EGP 150 million to EGP 200 million.

NBE has raised return on platinum certificate to 11.5% in 2012, then reduced it to 10.5% and raised it again to 12.5% in February.

A number of banks have raised returns on savings pools to relieve the pressure on foreign currency and combat dollarization process after Egypt’s foreign reserves fell to US$ 13.5 billion at the end of last January.