IXFORMATIOX REI,ATING TO CREDIT 73 



Two of the directors of the board have spent a considerable time in 

 the field with the appraisers, in order to obtain first-hand information as 

 to agricultural land and conditions throughout the province and to help 

 them to establish a proper basis of valuation. 



The reports of the appraisers are received at the head office weekly, 

 and as they come in the Commission decides on the applications. 



EGYPT. 



THE OPERATIONS OF THE lyAND BANK OF EGYPT IN 191 6. — From the reports of 

 the board of directors and of the auditors for 1915-1916. Alexandria, Societede publications 

 egyptienncs 19 16. 



The improvement in financial conditions apparent in Egypt as early 

 as the autumn of 1915 persisted throughout 1915-1916, important supple- 

 mentar}' resources, determined by the European conflict, compensating 

 partially for the deficit due to the insufficiency of the cotton harvest. 



This general situation influenced the business of the Land Bank of 

 Eg3'pt in the year which closed on 30 September 1916. 



Mortage business, which had been arrested since the beginning of 

 the war, consisted principally in transactions tending to consolidate and 

 regularize certain old loans. However towards the end of the year the 

 bank thought it right to resume on a very modest and prudent scale the 

 examination of certain business which presented particularly advantageous 

 conditions in the matter of security. The total sum of the mortgage loans 

 in being on the date mentioned was 91,643,830 francs (i). Since the Eand 

 Bank was founded it has concluded 2,552 amortizable loans and 99 sales 

 of real estate, also amortizable, for the total sum of 195,723,088 francs. 

 Only 26 of these loans were made last year, their total sum being 15,978,528 

 francs, to which a current mprtgage account of 77,770 francs must be 

 added. 



Advances for short terms made last year to borrowers on mortages, 

 who applied for them for the needs of their holdings, such loans being with- 

 in the limits of the returns from the land cultivated, amounted to 476,332 

 francs. 



Although receipts in coin were far larger than in the preceding year, 

 the restrictions of credit which circumstances imposed on the fellah, and the 

 necessity of meeting none the less, with a defective production, agricultural 

 costs increased by costliness of primary materials, increased arrears which 

 passed from 10,486,893 francs on 30 September 1915 to 11,621,890 francs 

 on 30 September 1916. 



(1)1 franc =a (j^/^d at par. 



