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Financial inclusion, Increasing investments highlights of Euromoney Conference's second session Egypt Ventures has provided 200,000 jobs, which is the highest employment rate in the Egyptian market, according to Marzban
The new Investment Law will help support projects and push investments, according to Hazem Badran, the group's co CEO in CI Capital, during a Q&A in the Euromoney Conference in Cairo in the second session "Euromoney in conversation with financiers and investors". "I know that everyone is working with full capacity to increase investments and make capital mainly depend on exporting petroleum, tourism, and increasing import," Badran said. CI Capital achieved an annual growth of 30% and revenues worth $1.5bn with assets of $5.5bn, according to Badran. He added that his company had a market share of 11% in the brokerage market last month. He noted that financing operations this year may exceed $2bn in different industries. "Our decision to focus on Egypt was right," Badran said. Ismail Douiri, the CEO of Attijariwafa Bank, said that Attijariwafa is not just a bank, but also a financial services group, explaining that it ranges between insurance, factoring, leasing, etc. He refers to the Barclays Bank deal saying it is a good deal, stressing that Attijariwafa has been trying to enter Egypt from a long time. Douiri said that the Egyptian African trade doesn't depend only on finance but also on trust between the two countries. Khalid El Gibali, division president in Middle East and North Africa in MasterCard said that the financial inclusion from MasterCard's opinion led to the inclusion of 100% of the citizens and the micro and small enterprises (SMEs) to the official banking sector through the spreading of digital payment to conduct payment transactions and bank transfers. Our cooperation with the Egyptian government especially the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) was successful, according to El Gibali. We believe that the concerned parties are ready to invest to achieve financial inclusion, said El Gibali He stressed that all what MasterCard needs is a clear legal framework to regulate the digital cash transactions and to establish regulatory frameworks to facilitate and spread such transactions. He also explained that during the period of 2011 to 2015 in Egypt, digital payment participated in creating about $2bn of the cumulative value. We can say that every 1% of the growth of changing the traditional payment to digital payment lead to the cumulative value increase by about half a million pound, said El Gibali. Amal Enan, executive director of the Egyptian American Enterprise Fund (EAEF), talked about the fund investment history in Egypt, saying that in 2013 it invested in the financial sector and found that 14% of the citizens only have bank accounts. She continued that the EAEF also invested in Fawry Company with the aim of encouraging investors to invest in the technology sector. She added that the main section which it invested in was the financial sector explaining that this sector was the most sector that needs more development. The EAEF focused more after the Egyptian pound floating in the Exporting sector, Enan said. We have a local team working in the market and we cooperate with ambassadors to discuss important decisions besides helping the foreign investors to invest in Egypt. Shehab Marzban, the chairperson of Egypt Ventures, said that the company's capital is EGP440m. Egypt Ventures has provided 200,000 jobs so far, which is the highest employment rate in the Egyptian market as well as creating online markets which indirectly enhances revenues, said Marzban.
Earlier in the opening panel of the conference Victoria Behn, the Euromoney conference Director of Middle East and Africa, said that there was some procedures lead to the increase of the direct foreign investments by 25% in the last year while the trade deficit decreased. She stressed also that Egypt must focus on the development of private and foreign investments.
