These are loans granted with collateral and repaid after a number of years. Their value varies from 10 G.M. to 500 G.M. The average value of loans of this type was 592 G.M., compared to 462 G.M. in 1905. This was due to the bank changing its loan system at the end of 1905, making them equal to thirty times the value of the collateral instead of 25 times.

The collection of interest and principal payments was good in the autumn of 1905 due to a good cotton season and high prices. By the end of December, 170,891 G.M. had been collected, which was all that was due for the year except for 54,000 G.M., of which 5,000 G.M. was collected in the first three weeks of January.

2,625 loans of type B, valued at 178,112 G.M., were repaid in advance last year. It is likely that most of them were repaid with funds borrowed from other institutions at an interest rate of less than 9 percent.

The interest rate on old and new loans issued by the bank was reduced from 9 to 8 percent starting from December 31, 1906, in accordance with the agreement with the Egyptian government to reduce the interest by 1 percent after the total loans exceed 700,000 G.M.

(22) Post Office Savings Banks The total amount deposited in the Post Office Savings Banks was 2,360,000 G.M. on December 31, 1905, compared to 2,225,000 G.M. on December 31, 1904. This represents an increase of 480,000 G.M. in the past year. The number of depositors was 434,244, an increase of 59,084. Of these, 43,877 were subjects of the local government, and the remaining 15,207 were from various foreign nationalities, mainly Italians or Greeks.

The number of children depositing money through savings stamps also increased, a notable increase from the previous year, reaching 225 on December 31. It was decided to send a postal clerk twice a week to the large schools in Egypt and Alexandria to collect money that students had saved, to relieve them of the burden of going to the post office.

Improvements were made to the savings bank system last year. An agreement was reached between the postal authorities in Egypt and the Sudan that money saved in the...