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EBRD and SG Expressbank provide financing backed by warehouse receipts
To help develop agribusiness in Bulgaria, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is extending a DM 10 million (€5 million) credit line to SG Expressbank (SG-E) for financing against warehouse receipts.
"This is the EBRD’s second credit line to the Bulgarian agribusiness sector. The financing will help overcome a lack of working capital, which represents one of the main constraints to the growth of the agribusiness sector in the region," said Hans Christian Jacobsen, Director of the EBRD’s Agribusiness Team.
The DM 10 million facility forms part of the four-year framework approved by the EBRD last year. It will allow Bulgarian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the agribusiness sector to obtain working capital by using grain stored in licensed warehouses as collateral.
The first DM 10 million credit line under this framework was extended to Expressbank in July 1999 to on-lend to Bulgarian SMEs. "SG-E was the first bank selected to participate in this programme as it is one of the main providers of financing to the agribusiness sector in Bulgaria," said Rogers LeBaron, a Director in the EBRD’s Financial Institutions Team. "Furthermore, its recent privatisation provided SG-E with a strong strategic shareholder, Société Générale. As a result, we expect the bank to continue to offer high-quality products and services to its customers."
The EBRD was set up in 1991 to aid the transition from centrally planned to market economies in central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The EBRD is owned by 60 shareholders – 58 countries, the European Investment Bank and the European Community – and operates with €20 billion in capital. The EBRD has now signed 121 investments in the agribusiness sector totalling €1.95 billion.
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