Arab and international institutions to buy National Bank for Economic Development

Arab and international institutions are contacting each other in order to form a federation that could buy the Moroccan government's remaining shares in the capital of the National Bank for Economic Development (NBED).

Sources declined to specify the institutions that are trying to buy the government's shares in the bank but the sources mentioned that the proposals are good ones and that they are being studied by specialized committees.

Morocco possesses 35% of the total shares of the NBED, whose field is financing industrial projects especially those of the intermediate companies. The bank which was established in 1952 possesses 45% of the capital of all Moroccan industrial projects.

The bank, which bought most of the shares of the Moroccan Bank for Africa and the East in 1993, gets loans from the World Bank, the European Bank for Investment, and the International Financing Institution. The government put up 17% of its shares in the bank for circulation in Casablanca Stock Exchange which were bought by small depositors.