NBE, International Financing Organizations negotiate to supply SMEs with $175m

National Bank of Egypt (NBE) is currently negotiating with three international financing organizations to get funding bunch worth US$ 175 million, source told Amwal Al Ghad on Saturday.

The source stated that NBE would allocated the funding bunch to finance Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) within the upcoming fiscal year, the source stated, refusing to reveal organizations’ names until negotiations concluded.

NBE has signed a new agreement worth €50 million with the French Development Agency within the last week to finance the third phase of The Egyptian Pollution Abatement Project (EPAPII).

The Egyptian Pollution Abatement Project (EPAPII) is one of the main projects managed by the Egyptian Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs (MSEA). Its main goals are to assist the Egyptian industry to comply with the environmental regulation, as well as improving its environmental performance altogether.

It is financed jointly by the World Bank (WB), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the French Development Agency.

The total cost of project’s third phase is estimated at €120 million divided into; € 70 million from EIB and € 50 million from the French Development Agency.

Furthermore, NBE’s total volume of financing SMEs has reached EGP 14 billion at the end of April 2015 opposed to EGP 12.9 billion at the end of 2014.

Moreover, National Bank of Egypt targets boosting the volume of funding SMEs to EGP 17 billion at the end of FY 2015/16.