The CNEP participates in the National 5% Loan of 1915

This Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris (CNEP) poster, placed in the Bizerte branch in Tunisia, calls on its clientele to participate in the 1st National Defence loan, launched in November 1915. The sums the French people loaned the State to finance the war effort earned them an annual annuity of 5%.

The blue and red diagonal stripes placed over the white background give the document an official character. The poster seeks to stimulate the patriotism and generosity of the French people living in the overseas territories.

The CNEP supported French companies in Tunisia, a province of the Ottoman Empire since 1574, before it became a French protectorate in 1881. Thereafter, a significant number of French people settled along the coast in northern Tunisia, where they occupied administrative positions, managed companies and developed farming activities.
For its part, the Comptoir national d’Escompte de Paris (CNEP) established a presence in Tunisia in 1893. It successively opened agencies in Tunis, Sousse and Sfax in order to support the wine, cereal and oil exports to metropolitan France. In 1907 it established an branch in Bizerte, a town located in northern Tunisia between the Mediterranean sea and Bizerte lake.