Cairo – Mubasher: The Egyptian National Programme for Community, Human, and Local Development (Mashroak) has financed about 4,000 projects with more than EGP 716 million in August, the Minister of Local Development, Mahmoud Shaarawy, said.

These projects have created nearly 37,000 jobs, Shaarawy noted in a statement on Monday.

Since the launch of this programme, about 154,000 projects have been financed with EGP 15.4 billion, which led to the creation of over 864,000 jobs.

Governorates in Upper Egypt came in the first position with 79,000 projects financed with EGP 6.7 billion, followed by the Delta region with 34,000 projects financed with EGP 4 billion.

Mashroak comes under the framework of the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) initiative to finance micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with loans at an interest rate of 5%.