Egypt receives $2b from AFREXIM

The African Export-Import Bank (AFREXIM) has allocated around $2 billion for Egypt to boost its economy, Amwal Al-Ghad reported yesterday.

A $500 million tranche of the loan will be dedicated to fund Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), according to the Egyptian magazine.

“The grant will finance the establishment of Egyptian-African projects in the fields of energy, chemical industries, construction and communications,” AFREMIX’s chairman, Benedict Okey Oramah, said during a meeting with the Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry, Amr Nassar.

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The bank’s total funding portfolio for Egypt, Oramah pointed out, amounted to $1.5 billion last year, representing 18 per cent of the bank’s entire financing programs. “The country’s [Egypt] portfolio also included $500 million for promoting Egyptian-African trade,” he added.

Egypt has been negotiating billions of dollars in aid from various lenders to help revive an economy battered by political upheaval since the 2011 revolution and to ease a dollar shortage that has crippled import activity and hampered recovery.

In November 2015, Egypt won a three-year $12 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, which aimed at reviving the country’s struggling economy, bringing down public debt and controlling inflation while seeking to protect the poor.