The Egyptian trade sector has received a total of $577 million credit facilities from the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). These facilities were provided in the period – 2012 – 2014. Benedict Oramah, executive vice president of the Bank in charge of Business Development and Corporate Banking, announced this in Cairo when he led a delegation of the Bank to meet Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, minister of trade, industry, small and medium enterprises of Egypt.
Oramah revealed that the facilities offered to Egypt comprise lines of credit and country risk guarantees, and also included $230 million granted in 2014.The Bank had also facilitated exports by Egyptian entities to some 15 African countries and was providing United States dollar liquidity to Egyptian banks for import financing.
He further announced that Afreximbank was currently considering an $800 million pipeline of deals from Egypt spread across major sectors of the economy, including $175 million in projects in the energy, hospitality and manufacturing sectors, $470 million in exports by Egyptian entities to six African countries and $150 million in line of credit facilities.
The Bank had designed a special product to provide liquidity to SMEs in Africa, continued Oramah, who added that the product would provide lines of credit to Egyptian factoring companies to purchase invoices of SMEs in the trading sector. According to Oramah, Afreximbank was interested in working with Egypt to design and implement a $500 million trade finance programme aimed at enhancing the country’s trade with the rest of Africa.
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Responding, Nour said that Egypt believed in working towards integration in Africa and that the support provided by Afreximbank was in line with the government’s strategy to take advantage of available opportunities in growing intra-Africa trade.
Egypt leading export products include Aluminium powder, quilted textiles, crude petroleum, petroleum gas and refined petroleum. Its major imports comprise refined petroleum, wheat, semi-finished Iron, machinery and petroleum gas.
The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), having its headquarters in Cairo, is a pan-African multilateral financial institution devoted to financing and promoting trade between African countries and also Africa’s foreign trade. The Bank was established in October 1993 by African governments, African private and institutional investors, and non-African investors. Since 1994, Afreximbank has approved almost $35 billion in credit facilities for African businesses, including about $4.5 billion in 2014.
