Egypt’s Banque Misr and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have signed a €425m credit line agreement to support local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Akef El Maghraby, Vice Chairperson of Banque Misr, and Flavia Palanza, Director of the EIB operations in the European region, inked the deal on Wednesday.
This agreement represents the first tranche of the €750m agreed upon earlier. The agreement for the remainder of the amount will be signed early next year. The loan term will reach six years.
This was third loan agreement between the two sides. The first two loan agreements amounted to €500m each, and were provided in two tranches, bringing the total amount of EIB’s loans to Banque Misr to nearly €2bn.
Banque Misr is one of the first banks that committed to achieving the Central Bank of Egypt’s directives to increase each bank’s financing portfolio to 23.51% of the bank’s credit before January 2020.
