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Kyrgyz cotton gets EBRD boost
Bank makes $1m loan to Jalal-Abad cotton company CCL
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is lending $1 million to
Cotton Corporation Limatex (CCL), a privately owned company based in
Jalal-Abad in the south of the Kyrgyz Republic. The loan was possible due to
the Bank’s new Early Transition Countries (ETC) initiative.
CCL, owned by Victor Yakimenko and Tamara Evert, will use the revolving
working-capital financing to buy raw cotton for processing into fibre and
yarn. CCL is building a yarn- and gauze-manufacturing facility to use supplies
from CCL’s three ginneries at which cotton seed is separated from raw cotton.
The ginneries are located in Osh, Sakalduy (Djalabad Province) and Kulundu
(Batken Province)
The project will indirectly benefit farmers growing cotton, the most important
cash crop in Central Asia. Besides agreeing to environmental monitoring, CCL
will further develop its monitoring of cotton suppliers in an effort to ensure
appropriate labor standards.
The ETC initiative was launched by the EBRD in 2004 to stimulate market
activity in the Bank’s lowest-income countries of operations: Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The initiative aims to stimulate market activity in these countries by using a
streamlined approach to financing more and smaller projects, mobilising more
investment, and encouraging economic reform. The initiative is part of an
international effort to address poverty in these countries. The Bank will
accept higher risk in the projects it finances in the ETCs, while still
respecting the principles of sound banking.
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