Federation of Egyptian Banks Plans EGP200 mln Contribution to Informal Areas

Federation of Egyptian Banks(FEB) plans to allocate EGP 200 million from the Banking System’s profits by the end of 2014 to complete upgrading of the informal areas in Egypt, Amwal Al Ghad’s Arabic website reported on Sunday. The FEB has started an upgrading plan for Egypt’s slums since late 2013.

According to an official banking source spoke to Amwal Al Ghad on Sunday, the FEB has detected around 20 slums in Cairo so as to be developed and provided with facilities including water, electricity and sanitation services. “This would be in cooperation with the Egyptian Armed Forces Engineering Authority after allocating about EGP150 million of the banks’ profits within 2013.” The source added

Mohamed Ashmawy – Chairman of the United Bank – formerly suggested the establishment of  a technical national authority, designated to detect nation-wide informal areas in order to determine later which areas need upgrading most.

In Egypt, there are around 40 banks with 3650 branches. The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) captures the lion’s shares of the banks’ total profits of EGP3 billion during the last fiscal year.

Meanwhile, HSBC-Egypt had allocated funding worth EGP100 million to provide facilities for the informal areas located in South Cairo districts, divided into 5 phases completed in 2013, targeting the upgrading of markets, schools and youth centers of those areas.