Palestinian Banking Corporation

The Palestinian Banking Corporation (PBC) "is a private sector investment and development bank incorporated in March 2001 with the overall objective to create a banking entity capable of offering comprehensive and secure banking services to the business sector and investors in a rapidly changing Palestinian environment. PBC roots go back to the Palestinian Development Fund (PDF) established in 1996 after the merger of three EU-funded credit agencies. During 1995 it was realized that the three credit agencies, Arab Development Credit Corporation (ADCC), Economic Development Group (EDG) and the Technical Development Cooperation (TDC) were providing similar services to same sectors. Based on this, it was decided to merge their operations to provide a larger organization capable of surviving into the future, particularly as the agencies had less than satisfactory performance in the repayment of loans during the period of the first Intifada (1987-1993), and were themselves too small to be self-sustainable. The merger formally took place in August 1996, when the PDF commenced operations in its own name, whilst retaining the Jerusalem registration of the three agencies to allow lending operations to continue legally in East Jerusalem. Since 1987, various donors have been funding the Palestinian Credit Agencies established for the purpose of assisting the Palestinian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) under funding agreements. The majority of the funding was coming from EU in the form of grants, which were only repayable if the funding objectives were not met. The funding has been used in revolving accounts, with the repayment of loans being used for new lending. The funding provided by the EU has been recently converted to equity in a Cyprus Foundation (The Euro-Palestinian Foundation Ltd.) to form the PBC's initial capital."

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