E-finance, a company operating the Egyptian government's financial network, announced on Tuesday the completion of issuing smartcards for the government's monetary support programme, Takaful and Karama, Ibrahim Sarhan, its Chairperson said. The project was executed in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Solidarity. E-finance will implement several projects in collaboration with the Ministry of Military Production over the next three years. These projects include automation of agricultural holdings and support capabilities for supervision systems through creating databases related to them. Automating agricultural holdings will reduce encroachment on agricultural lands, implement the state's agricultural policies, and develop the Ministry of Agriculture's control and management style at various work levels, departments, directorates, and different sectors in the ministry. The system's implementation process will be carried out over two phases. The first is the agricultural holdings inventory and registration across Egypt, comprising 7m agricultural holdings. The Ministry of Agriculture and all agricultural departments nationwide enter and modify data for seasonal agricultural calculations. As well as printing and distributing 7m subsidy cards to holders around the country and providing subsidies to holders in accordance with the policy to be determined by the state, the company will also provide training, maintenance, and technical support for all system service users. The second phase includes the deployment and operation of tablet devices in agricultural societies to enter and modify certain data for seasonal agricultural calculations, and open lines of communication to connect the system's agricultural associations. The company will provide training for all users of this system in these agricultural societies. The company will continue to implement projects for governmental entities within the transition plan for electronic payments. These contracts are automatically renewed, such as issuing payroll cards for the governmental sector's employees, and issuing pension cards and electronic tax collection cards for the Egyptian Customs Authority and the Public Tax Authority. The company has issued 7.1m smartcards for pensioners for the Ministry of Social Solidarity, in addition to issuing roughly 1.7m MasterCards for social security pensions, and prepaid Visa cards to customers of Egypt Post. The company also completed issuing 6.8m smartcards related to the petroleum product administration in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance. Source: Daily News Egypt
