Alaa Farouk — Head of the Agricultural Bank of Egypt (ABE) — and a delegation of bank leaders and officials visited Alexandria, where they met with Governor of Alexandria Mohamed Al-Sherif to discuss ways to enhance cooperation between the bank and the governorate.
This cooperation would entail supporting development projects, stimulating the production climate, and opening new horizons for investment opportunities in the governorate.
This comes in line with the state’s efforts to achieve sustainable and comprehensive development and maximise the productive capacities of all sectors in a way that contributes to supporting the national economy.
Moreover, it stems from a keenness to strengthen the bonds of cooperation between the bank and all the executive bodies in governorates and to build bridges of confidence and communication with the bank’s customers all over the country.
The governor of Alexandria and the head of the ABE also inaugurated the main branch of the bank in Downtown Alexandria in the presence of a number of senior investors, businessmen, members of the House of Representatives and Senate, and a number of executive and popular leaders in the governorate.
During the meeting, Farouk reviewed the capabilities of the ABE and the financing programmes provided by the bank, which have great facilities to finance major productive and investment projects in Alexandria.
He also emphasised the bank’s keenness to provide the necessary financing for small and medium projects in all industrial and commercial fields as well as its developmental role in financing micro-projects through the expansion of the ‘Bab Rizk’ microfinance programme, which provides a simple interest loan to help entrepreneurs launch their projects to provide job opportunities, which contributes significantly to improving the income level of a large segment of the governorate, especially youths and women.
Furthermore, the meeting dealt with the development plans and expansion projects witnessed by the governorate and the bank’s role in contributing to them, in addition to strengthening the governorate’s capabilities in transitioning merchants to urban markets as opposed to the old and random markets to preserve the civilized form of the governorate.
The meeting also touched upon the bank’s role in supporting impoverished families and those most in need of care among the people of the governorate in a number of neighbourhoods and villages to contribute to achieving the goals of the Decent Life Presidential Initiative.
This is done by organising public conferences to help these families and encourage them to work and produce and providing loans with low interest to implement small production and marketing units that contribute to raising their standard of living and serve as a nucleus for projects that serve the national economy.
For his part, Al-Sherif confirmed that the coming period will witness great cooperation between the bank and the governorate in many joint projects in all fields, which will benefit Alexandrians and support the state’s efforts to achieve sustainable development, the most important of which is to contribute to the governorate’s plan to establish urban markets and modernise the transportation system through a project to replace old and dilapidated taxis to provide a safe and civilised transportation system for citizens.