Central Bank of Egypt excludes retailers from EGP 200 bn SME financing initiative

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has excluded retail-focused SMEs from its facilitated financing initiative in a bid to reroute funding to the service, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors, banking sources told Mubasher. Retailing SMEs currently account for the lion’s share of the initiative’s borrowers. The CBE’s initiative, launched in 2016, aims to extend as much as EGP 200 bn in SME loans by 2020 through making it mandatory for commercial banks to allocate 20% of their loan portfolios to SMEs at 5% interest.