05:32 PM
Sunday 12 January 2020
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I wrote – Manal Al-Masry:
The Central Bank announced today, Sunday, the suspension of the initiative to finance regular medium companies operating or newly established at a rate of 7% to finance new machinery, equipment and production lines in the fields of industry, agriculture, new and renewable energy.
The Central Bank said in a regular book, today, Sunday, published on its website, that the decision to stop the initiative came after the banks had exhausted the 5 billion pound slice allocated to medium-sized projects (machinery and equipment) out of a total value of 200 billion pounds allocated to the Small and Medium Enterprises Initiative, which he launched at the beginning of 2016 .
The Central Bank launched an initiative to support small and medium enterprises in January 2016, at a value of 200 billion pounds, with a 5% interest to finance small projects, and 7% to finance medium projects to import machinery and equipment in the fields of agriculture, industry, energy, and renewable.
The initiative also included allocating 10 billion pounds to finance medium projects, “working capital”, at 12% interest for medium projects in the same fields, but this segment was suspended last year after the amount allocated to it was exhausted.
The Central Bank confirmed in its periodic book to the banks, signed on behalf of Tariq Amer, the bank’s governor, that the industrial sector could benefit from the industrial private sector financing initiative that was announced in the middle of last month, with a decreasing interest of 10%, and an amount of 100 billion pounds was allocated to it.
Tariq Amer, the governor of the Central Bank, had said in previous statements that the banks had pumped 160 billion pounds in financing the SME initiative since the initiative was launched until the end of last November.
Last month, the Central Bank launched an initiative to finance the private industrial sector at a value of 100 billion pounds, at a 10% discount, for factories whose annual sales range from 50 million pounds to one billion pounds.
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