News

news

Prince Talal and the President of the Arab Fund Sign a Partnership Agreement

 
As an integral part of AGFUND’s (The Arab Gulf Program for Development) continuous efforts to attract more partners for the “AGFUND APEX FUND ” which it has created in an attempt to provide the needed credit facilities necessary for the banks for the poor as well as the microcredit institutions (one that is regarded as the first developmental financing vent of its kind in the whole region),The President of AGFUND, Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz and His Excellency Dr. / Abdul Latif AL-Hamad, Chairman of the Board, General Manager of the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development as being the manager of the special account specified for financing the small and medium projects, shall both be signing a financing agreement. According to the terms of this agreement, the “Arab Fund shall be participating by an amount of five million Dollars in (AGFUND’s credit fund for financing the banks for the poor in the Arab world) The agreement signing ceremonial is scheduled to be held in AGFUND’s main headquarters in Riyadh on Tuesday, January 10, 2012, at one pm. The CEO of AGFUND, Nasser AL-Kahtani has explained that: “The target of the credit Fund is to provide credit facilities for the banks of the poor that have been established by AGFUND. These ones include four currently active banks as well as other banks and financial institutions that are yet on their way to be founded. Likewise, the Fund similarly targets the other microcredit institutions in the Arab world through offering competitive and various financing products that meet the necessities of the banks for the poor as well as the microcredit institutions. This is done in order to contribute in filling the gigantic gap between the supply and demand of these products.” In addition to the previously mentioned, Al-Kahtani also explained that in view of the keen endeavors exerted by AGFUND to mobilize the developmental companies, it can be expected that the credit portfolio of the Fund would reach 100 million dollars by the end of the year 2015. The partnership with the “Arab Fund” comes in context with the initiative launched by AGFUND in 2011 within the framework of current cooperation between the organizations and the mutual understanding of the developmental issues, as well as highlighting the developmental Arab cooperation. It is definitely worth mentioning that both of these organizations are members in the eight “Group of Funds and Arab Development Institutions”. This initiative launched by AGFUND is expected to speed up the pace of microcredit in the Arab region, as the number of the poor in the Arab World is estimated by almost 70 million poor people, in the time that only 3 million of whom receive financial services.

Publish date:  05 Jan 2012
Category:  Other