EGYPT – The National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and the French Development Agency (AFD) have signed a new credit facility agreement worth €100 million (US$119.15m) with the aim of financing climate conservation and sustainable development projects in Egypt.
Chairperson of the NBE, Hisham Okasha, said that the new agreement will allow directing finance and support to the projects that are fully compatible with the sustainable development goals and the environment conservation.
Fabio Grazi, Director of the AFD’s Regional Office in Egypt, affirmed the French Agency’s interest in this funding, especially in light of the large-scale transformation process that is currently taking place at the level of the global financial system, which requires rapid and effective action towards implementing sustainable development standards.
Moreover, Hisham Al-Sifti, Head of the National Financial Institutions and International Financial Services Group at the NBE, said that 60% of the facility will be allocated to finance projects concerned with mitigating the effects of climate change, while the rest 40% will be directed to projects related to climate change adaptation.
He added that as part of the transformation programme towards climate-friendly financial systems, the AFD will provide the NBE with a technical assistance grant of €1.5 million (US$1.79m) to support the integration of climate change challenges into the bank’s core financial activities and support the deployment of innovative financing mechanisms to support sustainable development.
This comes weeks after NBE announced that it had been awarded ISO 27001:2013 certification for information security management systems by BSI, the British Standards Institute.
The certification covers all of NBE’s electronic branches in the country which provide customers with a complete digital experience of some of NBE’s banking services without any human intervention. The bank has also renewed its certification for the previously awarded scope in 2016 & 2017 for its data centers and call center.
The certification assures customers’ trust in NBE digital services through emphasizing the bank’s commitment to continuous improvement of its security measures and indicators, which are a key requirement in the international standard.
The bank has also renewed and extended the scope of its certification for ISO 22301 for business continuity management systems last year.
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