Head of the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (SMEDA) Nevine Gamea said that the agency has pumped EGP 20m to finance 20 contractors. She added that there is a service dedicated to financing the SMEDA's subcontractors to provide them financing of up to EGP 3m each. Gamea noted that contractors are still afraid of obtaining funding. She explained that the agency requires simple documents from contractors to obtain funding, specifically documents related to their activity and a statement from the Egyptian Federation of Construction and Building Contractors (EFCBC) stating the category under which the contractor is listed and the scale of their activity. She continued that the agency has more than 33 offices across Egypt and provides all financial and non-financial services to contractors. The agency, Gamea explained, has injected EGP 5.3bn into projects during the year 2017, 48% of them in the commercial and service sectors, adding that the SMEDA seeks to expand in financing contractors due to the importance of the sector in providing employment opportunities. The EFCBC has signed the first cooperation protocol with the recently established financing arm of Banque du Caire to provide financing services to the contracting companies operating in the market and to support them in implementing their expansion plans in the coming period.
