Suez Canal Bank offered EGP 700 million worth of sharia-compliant finances by the end of the first half of 2012, sources said. The bank targets to increase the volume of Islamic finances to EGP one billion by the end of 2012, through expanding in sharia-compliant products such as murabaha. Sources said the bank plans to launch new savings instrument complaint with Islamic sharia law with terms of 3 and 5 years in order to boost the value of the bank's Islamic deposits. The bank's deposits retreated by EGP 624 million, registering EGP 10.6 billion at the end of March 2012, down from EGP 11.3 billion at the end of December 2011. It is worth mentioning that Suez Canal Bank did not achieve profit in Q1 of 2012, while it achieved EGP 20.7 million as profit in Q1 of 2011. The bank's portfolio of loans and credit facilities declined from EGP 5.4 billion to EGP 4.9 billion with a decrease of EGP 422 million, or 7.7%.
