Farouk al-Okda, head of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), on Sunday granted four banks the right to disburse “yellow remittances,” money owed to Egyptian workers by Iraq since the 1980s, starting from Sunday of next week. The banks include the Ahly, Misr, Alexandria and Arab African International Banks.
The decision was made on Sunday evening following a meeting with representatives of the four banks which was attended by Deputy Governor Gamal Negm.
Bank officials from the four banks held intensive meetings on Monday to coordinate and determine which branches would be responsible for disbursement of the “yellow remittances.”
Misr Bank Head Mohamed Barakat said the CBE on Thursday would announce the names of the beneficiaries and the amounts they are owed as well as the documents required for the disbursement to take place.
Barakat added that the banks would continue to meet until the end of the week, in order to determine which branches would be responsible for the disbursement process.
Ahly Bank operations head Mohamed Ehab said the bank would announce the names of the beneficiaries in each of its branches, and that the beneficiary can then choose which branch they would like to receive their disbursements from.
Ehab said the beneficiaries did not have to be bank clients and that each bank would be receiving a file with their names and the amounts due from the CBE. He added that the payments were expected to be made after the banks’ official working hours ended.
Alexandria Bank Official Basil Rahmy said that all bank branches would participate in the disbursement process and that the money to be disbursed would be received from the CBE within days.
Iraq said on Saturday it had agreed to pay US$408 million to hundreds of thousands of Egyptian workers who fled Iraq because of Saddam Hussein’s 1990-91 invasion of Kuwait.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
