Minister of Trade and Industry Nevine Gamea — CEO of the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA) — announced that MSMEDA financed more than 60,000 small and micro projects during the first quarter (1Q) of 2022 with about EGP 2bn, which generated over 105,000 jobs. She said that the agency will continue to support the small enterprise sector in coordination with various state agencies to implement the directives of the political leadership. The minister added that the MSMEDA seeks to provide the necessary services to encourage citizens to establish and expand new projects. This would eventually lead to reducing imports and limit USD expenditures. Additionally, projects with a competitive advantage in foreign markets are encouraged to increase their ability to export. Furthermore, Gamea said that the agency's activities during this period depended on a number of axes that are consistent with the state's plan to support the small enterprise sector, including focusing on the governorates of Upper Egypt and the border areas to achieve the maximum possible benefit from natural resources. She noted that these governorates received more than 50% of the total financing that went to small and micro enterprises, with women receiving 48% of the total financing provided by the agency. Gamea also stressed that citizens were encouraged to start new small projects, as more than 3,000 projects were funded, accounting for 37% of the total new small enterprises funded during the same period. Citizens in the age group from 30 to 40 years benefited at a rate of 36% of the total financing. She explained that the MSMEDA, in cooperation with the governorates and the executive bodies, implemented projects for infrastructure, community development, and training for employment to provide a suitable environment for establishing and expanding small and micro projects, in addition to providing wages for irregular workers, as these projects provided more than 602,000 daily work opportunity. With regard to technically supporting projects and assisting them in the procedures for establishing, licensing, and extracting the necessary documents for operation, Gamea indicated that the one-stop-shop units of the agency in all governorates activate the various advantages of the new project development law 152 of 2020. It also provided about 35,000 services to citizens, including issuing final licenses and temporary licenses for new projects as well as issuing permanent and temporary licenses to regularise the status of projects operating in the informal sector. She added that training programmes were implemented to spread the idea of self-employment, with about 93 training courses provided, benefiting about 2,000 young men and women in cooperation with the Ministries of Youth and Sports and Manpower, the International Labour Organisation, and a large number of universities.
