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

A public development bank (PDB), like any other bank, serves as a financial intermediary, but 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 roles and interventions are rather limited. This applies to banks that were created during the socialist era of Former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Second, the largest share of PDB-related projects implemented in Egypt is undertaken by government-owned commercial banks, namely the National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, and Banque du Caire. Thus, the objective of this paper is twofold: first, to analyze how and why the role of PDBs can be played by public banks; and second, to highlight the lessons that can be learned from the resilience of the Egyptian financial systems to the succession of crises/disruptions.