Egypt’s SFD Seeks to Secure USD300 mln Loan from World Bank

Egypt’s Social Fund for Development (SFD) will be signing within next year a US $ 300 million agreement with the World Bank designed to fund small and micro sized enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt, said Ghada Wali – SFD’s General Secretary.

This comes in addition to the US$200 million framework agreement recently signed between SFD and the World Bank on funding the Emergency Labor Intensive Investment Project.

The ‘Emergency Labor Intensive Investment Project’ is a program adopted by the Egyptian government which assigned the SFD to implement it.

In earlier statements to Amwal Al Ghad, Essam El-Korashy – head of SMEs Development Department at SFD – mentioned that his fund had provided 18.000 job opportunities through US $ 180 million financial assistance provided by the World Bank.

He also stated that the SFD had allocated EGP 200 million for the micro-enterprises sector in accordance with the fund’s keenness to create job opportunities for the youth and to lower the unemployment rates.