Agricultural Bank of Egypt strengthens its investment support in 2024

The Agricultural Bank of Egypt has strengthened its support for the financing of projects of all kinds, whether large, medium, small or even micro, especially for the agricultural sector in all its productive areas to achieve agricultural and rural development, in the framework of the Bank's permanent work to stimulate investment in this sector and related activities.

The results of the Bank's business last September reflect the remarkable progress that the Bank has witnessed in this file. Its loan portfolio grew to 80.3 billion pounds by the end of September 2024, compared to 71.9 billion by the end of September 2023, and the number of customers benefiting from these loans reached about 506 thousand individual and corporate customers including 28 thousand new customers who joined the Bank's customer list during the 2024.

This was the result of the Bank's continuing to pursue disciplined credit policies to link lending to production and direct financing for serious productive activities, thereby stimulating investment in the agricultural sector in all its productive areas.

Loans to finance the agricultural sector and related industries accounted for about 80% of the size of the credit portfolio, with the Bank this year doubling the amount of financing for the production of agricultural crops received by smallholder farmers with a return of 5%.

The size of the Bank's Agricultural Crop Loan portfolio was about 25.6 billion pounds by the end of September 2024, "benefiting some 252 thousand farmers in all governorates of the Republic", compared to 17.4 billion by the end of September 2023, confirming the Bank's desire to strengthen its position as one of the largest banks specializing in supporting and financing the agricultural sector.

The bank has also succeeded in doubling the value of the credit categories for all agricultural crops over the last period by 25% to 70%, confirming its keenness to support peasants and small farmers.

This is an affirmation of the bank’s desire to help farmers afford high production costs and requirements. Contract farming also received a significant share in the Bank's policies and business plans, which contributed to increasing the volume of financing for contractual farming to 2.9 billion pounds by the end of September 2024.