The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) has issued $462 million letters of credit in favor of the Egyptian General Petroleum Authority (EGPA) since the beginning of 2013 in order to import oil products. An official source revealed to Amwal Al Ghad that NBE has opened two letters of credit the value of each one up $231 million for EGPA in order to import oil and petroleum products. The source explained that these letters of credit come in the framework of the annual letters of credit which issued by NBE in favor of EGPA to take crude oil from Kuwait, which amounts to approximately $ 1.5 billion. The source stated that NBE is stilling considering the request of EGPC to boost the issued letters of credit to import Kuwaiti oil from $1.5 billion to $2 billion to increase the imported amount from 1.5 to 2 million barrels a month, after cancelling $1 billion Libya Oil deal due to the political and insecurity turmoil. Within the last two weeks, NBE has captured EGP150 loan in favor of Misr Petroleum Company so as to import new line productions, in addition EGP20 million to import equipments for the company, after competing with Banque Misr, Suez Canal Bank and NSGB. NBE is one of the largest funding for EGPC in the Egyptian banking sector, the total value of letters of credit which the bank issued reached $7.7 billion (EGP54 billion) by the end of the current year, whereas the total funding of NBE for the petroleum sector up EGP40 billion in the last fiscal. Furthermore, the total letters of credit which the bank has been issued in favor of EGPA reached around $7.7 billion (EGP54 billion) at the end of the last fiscal year of 2012/2013 and the total funding of NBE for the petroleum sector exceeded EGP40 billion.
