The board of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) took several decisions to ease the funding of small and medium sized enterprises as a main contributor in the production and investment sector of the Egyptian economy.

SMEs are a great tool to provide jobs to youths, reduce unemployment rates, improve income and gross domestic product and encourage exports, the CBE said in a press release.

The program will cover all of Egypt and penetrate all segments to allow anyone who could contribute to developing the economy to have access to funding, it said.

The CBE will help provide support to SMEs through a comprehensive program that will be applied through banks in cooperation with relevant state sectors to allow banking funding, it said.

Instructions were given to banks to increase loans offered to SMEs by at least 20% of the banks’ loan portfolio in the coming four years, it said.

The banking sector will pump EGP 200 billion in the form of new loans for SMEs, it said.