Egypt's Commercial International Bank (CIB) said on Sunday it would launch financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the end of the year but said Egypt needed better credit data for it to rapidly expand the business.
Hisham Ezz al-Arab, chairman of Egypt's biggest private sector bank, said CIB aimed to lift retail and SME lending to 50 percent of its loan portfolio in the next five years, diversifying from its current corporate focus.
"We need to diversify our risk exposure, and this will take more than five years at least," Ezz al-Arab told Reuters.
Corporate lending now accounts for more than 90 percent of CIB's loans, while retail lending focuses on employees of corporate clients.
The bank expects to set up a department to launch SME financing by the end of the year. The bank is receiving advice from the International Finance Corp (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank.
"There is a very good margin there. These SMEs are the backbone of any economy, not only the large corporates," said Ezz al-Arab, who is also CIB's managing director.
Comments
Comments are closed.