Al-Assaf honors NCB for supporting forum for promising regions

Minister of Finance Ibrahim Al-Assaf has honored the National Commercial Bank (NCB) for supporting functions of the Industrial Development Forum for Promising Regions, which was recently organized by the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF) in Riyadh.
Board Chairman of NCB Mansor Al-Maiman appreciated the minister’s honoring of the bank and said that the support given by the bank to the event stems from its awareness in supporting national economic functions and its responsibility of boosting development strategy in the Kingdom.
NCB’s support to the forum copes with its programs being rendered to support and fund mega, medium and small-scale companies for their importance in economic development in the country, he added.
He said the volume of funding provided by the NCB to the companies in 2014 amounted to SR113 billion, or an increase of 14 percent compared to figures of last year. Through these efforts, the bank pursues to providing the best funding programs and services to its customers, he said.
The vision of the bank comes to support corporate funding and industrial projects of strategic importance to developmental plans in a bid to meet the requirements of economic development being witnessed by the Kingdom. The bank has also plans to continue funding mega, medium- and small-scale projects so as to encourage all productive industrial activities in the Kingdom, he pointed out.
Within its continued efforts to boost small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their role in the national economy, Head of Corporate Banking Group at NCB Al-Sharif Khalid Al-Ghalib said the bank topped all banks participating in Kafala Program in the first nine months of 2014 in terms of the number of guarantees (kafalas), beneficiaries, funding, and kafalas approved by the program, which stood at 52 percent.
In 2014, the bank opened 14 new centers to serve SMEs which were assigned to provide commercial sales and funding products to customers of the SME projects Kingdomwide, he said.