Egypt's biggest lender, the state-owned National Bank of Egypt the National Bank of Egypt's (NBE) small and medium enterprises (SMEs) portfolio has registered 37.5 billion Egyptian pound ($2.1 billion), said Deputy General Manager of SME Finance Mohsen Ismail. In 2010, the value of SMEs portfolio has recorded 4 billion pounds, in addition the bank aims to increase its the SMEs portfolio to 100 billion Egyptian pounds by the end of 2020. The bank allocated 13 billion pounds , out of the 37.5 billion pounds , for the Central Bank of Egypt's initiative for the SMEs sector in Egypt at 5% and 7% interest rate , Ismail said. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) obliged Egyptian banks to give out 20% of their total loans portfolio to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This will provide 350,000 SMEs with EGP 200 billion in four years at 5% interest rate. The CBE's statement included redefining SMEs to include companies that make EGP 50,000 in annual revenue. On the other hand, The volume of the loan portfolio of NBE hiked to 400 billion pounds by the end of the fiscal year 2016/2017. Moreover, NBE has created a portfolio of 1.3 billion Egyptian pounds for only the micro-enterprises and it is expected that it will increase to 5 billion pounds in 2020.
