The number of citizens who need microfinance in Egypt stands at about 18 million people, estimated Mahmoud Aboul Oyoun, the former governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and chairperson of FA Group for Financial Consulting.

He added that about 20% of Egypt’s population is living below the poverty line, and this category is in need of this type of funding.

If those people can be divided into five-member families, it means that 3.8 million families need microfinance. If the average loan, which can be classified as microfinance, is estimated at EGP 15,000, it means that those families need about EGP 54bn of financing, according to Aboul Oyoun.

The FA Group celebrated last week the graduation of the first batch of SMEs financing specialists who are working in the Housing and Development Bank (HDB).

Aboul Oyoun said that the company seeks to support the state and the CBE in their efforts to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through qualifying banks’ employees to deal with these projects.

Banks previously avoided financing SMEs and micro-enterprises for many years, but there was always a need to support and finance these projects because of their important, said Aboul Oyoun.