Bright new funds

Loans are the latest move for cleaner technology

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The partners signing the agreement

The need to help industry find suitable funding for the implementation of cleaner production policies while at the same time keeping up with modern production technology was the main reason behind last month's signing of significant environmental agreements. The signatories were the Environmental Compliance Office (ECO) presided over by Sherif El-Gabali, board member of the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI), the National Bank of Egypt represented by Mohamed Murad Abdel-Fattah, consultant for the Credit Marketing Group, and the Industrial Development Bank represented by its chairman Shahin Serageddin.

The cooperation agreements aim at outlining an action plan to enable industrial enterprises -- especially small and medium-sized enterprises, where ECO is active in providing technical and environmental assessment studies -- to comply with environment laws and regulations and to implement cleaner production options.

The agreements qualify enterprises as suitable for investment in environmental funding, selecting a funding mechanism that meets the individual capacity of each enterprise.

El-Gabali said the event complimented the role of the FEI in advancing Egyptian industry by assisting smaller businesses to play a greater role in helping the environment. The ECO also offers a number of incentives including providing the latest clean production options, promoting investment in this and other environmental benefits and supporting environmental management systems in industry by offering soft loans to fund the implementation of better environmental options. The loans would be up to LE3 million, payable over a period ranging from one to five years and including a one- year grace period at an annual interest rate of 2.5 per cent.

So far 37 enterprises have benefited from these loans, bringing the value of disbursed loans for the funding of cleaner production to LE39.5 million.