Egypt's third biggest public lender Banque du Caire plans to inject 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($169 million) into small and medium-sized businesses, deputy head of credit division said Saturday. The money will be in form of direct loans worth one billion pounds and indirect financing worth 500 million pounds, Yasser Zaher – Deputy Head of Credit Division at Banque Du Caire – further told Amwal Al Ghad. The bank's portfolio of small and medium-sized enterprises registered around 900 million pounds by the end of April 2016, Zaher added. The portfolio is divided as 200 million pound as direct financing and 700 million pounds worth of indirect financing in form of letters of credit and letters of guarantee (LCs and LGs), the banking official explained. In January, Egypt's central bank launched an initiative to finance SMEs, and obliged banks to provide a minimum of 20 percent of their total loans portfolio to this sector within four years.
