Banque Du Caire will sign a finance contract worth EGP 200 million with the Social Fund for Development (SFD) this month to finance micro-enterprises, said Essam El-Korashy, head of SMEs development at SFD. SFD, he added, is not reluctant to finance any project regardless of its size, as it financed more than 18,000 small and medium enterprises and 65,000 micro-enterprises. Mounir El-Zahed, chairman of Banque Du Caire, earlier told Amwal Al Ghad that financing micro-enterprises are of the most important tools used by the bank to achieve high growth rates in the upcoming period. The lender has more than 10 years of experience in financing such enterprises, in addition to having trained staff that is qualified in offering finances to these enterprises, amid the lack of budgets and credit bureaus for such enterprises. Banque Du Caire has the largest micro-finance portfolio that reached EGP 5 billion with a delinquency rate of less than 3%. The bank offered about one million loans to more than 360,000 customers; 20% of which are women. The value of each loan is about EGP 50,000 paid in installments. The bank's officials pay visits to customers at their work place, El-Zahed added.
