Central Bank takes control of PBDAC: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi issued a decree transferring the oversight of the Principal Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit (PBDAC) to the CBE and renaming it the Egyptian Agricultural Bank. The decree makes law news we had covered at the beginning of this month. The bank was previously under the authority of the Agriculture Ministry, but will now run as a joint stock entity with state-owned capital. Ahram Online says the decree sets the duty of the Egyptian Agricultural Bank to “provide funding of various types to agricultural and rural development activities in accordance with the state’s goals for agricultural development … [and] provide the necessary funding for agricultural production, including the importing of essential inputs, and provide the full range of banking services.

In its first reincarnation, the bank was formed in 1930 under the name of the Agricultural Loaning Bank, to provide loans to Egyptian farmers. According to CBE data, as of June 2016, the bank operated 1,017 branches across Egypt. For comparison, leading private-sector bank CIB operates a branch network of 163 branches in the country.