The National Bank of Egypt's (NBE) Vice Chairperson, Yehia Aboul Fotouh, ruled out the possibility that the bank will offer foreign bonds currently. Aboul Fotouh explained that the bank prefers to deal with foreign financial institutions to secure foreign exchange because borrowing from them is easier and cheaper than issuing foreign bonds. Earlier, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it was considering arranging loans of $150m to the NBE to support entrepreneurship and SMEs in Egypt. However, Aboul Fotouh denied that there are ongoing negotiations with any international institution to obtain loans. He affirmed that the bank has enough US dollar reserves and that it does not need at the present time to borrow from abroad. In addition, he noted that the bank has pumped $64bn to finance foreign trade operations since the exchange rate flotation in November 2016. In another context, Aboul Fotouh explained that the portfolio of facilities granted by the bank to the contracting sector reached about EGP 65bn, adding that the bank does not need to increase the ceiling of financing granted to this sector and other sectors at the present. Aboul Fotouh explained that the size of the bank's retail banking portfolio reached EGP 80bn, while the size of the SMEs portfolio reached about EGP 60bn. According to Aboul Fotouh, the bank's total financing under the mortgage finance initiative for low and middle Income was about EGP 7.8bn to 75,000 customers, in addition to EGP 1.5bn funnelled to the tourism sector under the initiative launched by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to finance the sector. Aboul Fotouh said that the bank decided to add the factoring activity to Al-Ahli Leasing Company, excluding the establishment of a specialized company in the field of factoring at the present time, while still studying the launch of a company to finance the micro sector. He pointed out that the NBE aims to exit from five or six companies in the current fiscal year along with selling lands worth EGP 1bn in cooperation with Banque Misr. The NBE had achieved EGP 9bn profits in the first half of the fiscal year 2018/19. The bank hopes to achieve similar profits in the second half of the year, according to Aboul Fotou.
