Since its creation in 1992 under the name of the Social Fund for Development, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDA) has financed about 2.9m small and micro enterprises with a total funding of EGP 37.8bn, which has created approximately 4.6m jobs, according to its CEO, Nevine Gamea.
She noted that during the first nine months of this year alone, the agency has pumped about EGP 4.1bn to fund some 189,000 small and micro enterprises, creating about 299,000 jobs.
Gamea attended the meeting of the ‘People and Banks Conference’ last Wednesday regarding the role of banks in small and medium enterprises.
She stressed SMEDA’s interest and its readiness to cooperate with all banks predisposed towards financing youth projects in various credit systems and mechanisms, with a particular focus on providing marketing, training, advisory, and technical services support.
The agency also looks forward towards establishing service complexes, one-stop shops in all of the republic’s governorates, which aim to assist small entrepreneurs in establishing their projects, developing their products as well as expanding the scope of their work, by gathering the concerned parties to derive the necessary documents from one place, added SMEDA’s CEO.
Furthermore, Gamea stressed the importance of the small and micro enterprises sector in raising the economic development rate in Egypt, as well as creating hundreds of thousands of jobs annually.
SMEDA, since its inception, aims to contribute to the development of financing mechanisms and programmes to suit all the needs of this sector, and provide a package of non-financial services to ensure the success of small enterprises and their continued and effective contribution towards achieving comprehensive social and economic development, she indicated.
According to Gamea, the agency is working to sponsor this sector, and is coordinating with various state agencies and institutions in order to support it, as well as encourage young people to invest their energies in it.