The National Bank of Egypt, the country's biggest commercial bank, is expecting to turn its Shanghai representative office into a branch by the end of 2007, a senior executive of the bank said Monday.

"We received preliminary approval from the China Banking Regulatory Commission in January," said Yasser El Negouly, chief representative of the NBE Shanghai Representative Office, adding the new branch will be responsible for the NBE's business in Asia.

Currently, the NBE has two foreign branches in both London and New York and two representative offices in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Shanghai.

The Shanghai representative office, established in 1999, provides financial services for 65 percent of the trade between China and Egypt.

Trade between China and Egypt totaled 3.19 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, up 48.8 percent from 2005, according to the figures from China's Ministry of Commerce.

"This is not a big sum, but I believe China will be one of Egypt's three major trade partners by 2010," Negouly said.

"We decided to set up a branch in China because of the great potential here," he said.

Trade volume between Egypt and its two main trade partners, the European Union and the United States, each exceeded 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2005, according to a report released on Sunday by the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The African Economic Outlook predicts that China could replace the United States as Egypt's main trading partner in five or six years.

Source: Xinhua