Banks operating in Egypt have provided a total funding of 146 billion Egyptian pounds to Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) under the Central Bank of Egypt's (CBE) initiative, chairman of Banque Misr, Mohamed El-Etreby, said. The CBE has offered banks many incentives to finance the SME sector including requiring lenders to allocate at least 20% of their credit portfolio to SMEs, El-Etreby added during a workshop organised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) in Cairo on Monday. He added that CBE initiative, which was launched four years ago, helped in achieving sustainable development and reducing the unemployment rate in Egypt. Under the initiative, banks offer SMEs soft loans with interest rates of 5% and 7%, he noted. SMEs contribute 33% to the gross domestic product (GDP) of developing countries, while their contribution to GDP reaches 59% in developed countries, he indicated. El-Etreby also noted that different measures taken by the CBE led to the success of the initiative.