One thing Egyptians abroad can do for Egypt and for themselves is to move some of their dollar savings from a bank abroad to the National Bank of Egypt (Al bank alahly almarkazy). Please consider doing this even for a small amount of money. check the website nbe.eg/Default.aspx?AID=20&CID=5#Title. You basically buy Guaranteed Investment certificates at a guaranteed return rate of 4%. You buy them in units of US$1000 so you can choose to buy one certificate for $1000 or a 100 certificates each of $1000 or... you can redeem them $1000 at a time so there really is no restriction if you change your mind. 4% is far much better than any rate you can get from cashable certificates abroad. I believe (you check) you can also transfer money out of Egypt if you change your mind up to $80 0r 100,000 with no problem but I can understand if you worry so just transfer $25,000 to start with and if you lose them, assume there was a stock market crash or when you sold your home, you got just a bit less than you expected. Currently, one year student fees for a foreign undergraduate student in UBC canada is $25,000 (just the fees). for a graduate student , it is $7000 . think of your education in Egypt and how much you paid for it and consider transferring this bit of saving to Egypt. it is NOT a donation. your money is in guaranteed by the bank Al Ahly. of course, there is a possibility that the state of Egypt falls into chaos and you cannot withdraw your money. but there is a much bigger possibility that the state of Egypt turns the corner to much better time or at the very least stays at what it was on prior to the recent turmoil. if that happens, you get a higher return than you do abroad and you get a sense of having done something that helped increase the possibility of the second scenario becoming a reality. how do you buy the certificates? the unfortunate part is that you need to have a US account in the bank here in Egypt and to give them instructions to buy the certificates once the funds are received. you also ask them for the swift code of the bank and the exact name and branch address. this is one visit to the bank by you or someone with a "tawkeel" you need to deposit US dollars when you open the account I deposited $500 . after that all you need is to transfer the funds directly from abroad to your US$ account in the bank al ahly. i did that with ease from HSBC over the internet/phone. they only take full $1000 units so allow for a bit extra for your Canadian or Us account to deduct their fees leaving full multiples of $1000. it is very frustrating to not know what to do in there difficult times ... this is an easy thing to do. i urge you to consider it and to invest the time in the two visits, one in cairo and one in your hometown abroad. May we all manage to do something that leaves a positive impact on the world somewhere.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:31:36 +0000
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