|
Loan to quadruple Kyrgyz bank's micro-lending credit line
EBRD and IFC combined efforts to help small businesses
A Kyrgyz bank active in financing small and medium-sized businesses is to
quadruple its micro-lending credit line thanks to a $3 million loan that the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is putting together with the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World
Bank.
Investment Export-Import Bank (Ineximbank) started lending to micro and small
enterprises in 2002, when it became a partner bank of the EBRD’s Kyrgyz
micro-lending programme, and also that year secured a $1 million loan provided
jointly by the EBRD itself and the US-sponsored EBRD-SME (Small and
Medium-sized Enterprise) Finance Facility.
Half of the additional $3 million loan will come from the IFC, $1.2 million
from the EBRD and $300,000 from the EBRD-SME Finance Facility, which uses $150
million in EBRD and US government funds to support the growth of small
business in some EBRD countries of operations in the south-eastern Europe, the
Caucasus and Central Asia.
Ineximbank, in which the EBRD acquired a 25 per cent stake last October, is
one of the five partner banks through which the EBRD and IFC provide loans to
small businesses in eight cities of the Kyrgyz Republic, as well as in rural
areas where credit sources are rarer.
The United States, European Union, Dutch and Swiss governments financially
underpin the Bank’s Kyrgyz micro-lending programme. Some 3,200 loans with a
cumulative value of $5.9 million have been disbursed since its launch in April
2002. The 2004 target is to double the amount of loans being made to 1,000 a
month.
In turn, the Kyrgyz initiative is part of a wider Central Asian EBRD programme
under which more than 94,000 loans worth about $490 million have so far been
made to micro, small and medium-sized firms to kick-start economic activity at
ground level in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic.
|
