Development Banks in Egypt: Overview, Issues and the Way Forward

The American University in Cairo, Economic Research Forum and Cairo University are currently finalizing their latest research paper. 

Public Development Banks (PDB), like any other bank, serve as a financial intermediary, yet with a strong developmental role. This paper provides an overview of PDBs in Egypt. The latter is of particular interest for two reasons. First, while PDBs have a long history in the Egyptian economy, their role and the intervention are rather limited. This applies to banks that were created during the socialist era of Nasser. Second, the largest share of the PDBs-related projects implemented in Egypt is undertaken by government-owned commercial banks, namely National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr and Banque du Caire.

The objective of this paper is twofold: first, to analyze how and why the role of PDBs can be played by public banks; second, to highlight the lessons that can be learned from the resilience of the Egyptian financial systems to the succession of crisis/disruptions.