We have launched the Small Business Initiative, a strategic initiative integrating the tools the EBRD offers to support small enterprises. We provide loans and investments through financial institutions and risk-sharing facilities, and we finance small businesses directly. But we don’t stop there.
Our support for SMEs stretches over several priority areas. We provide small enterprises with advice to help them innovate and grow and we work with policy-makers to create an environment where they can succeed.
To classify a company as an SME, we look at a combination of turnover, employees and total assets. Typically, an SME is considered as a company with turnover of under €50 million (or a balance sheet of under €43 million), with between 10 and 250 employees (exceptionally up to 500 employees)
From financiers to engineers, lawyers and industry experts, our unique mix of skills and expertise comes together to offer solutions that really meet the needs of small businesses.
The EBRD’s Small Business Initiative (SBI) helps small and medium-sized enterprises get the finance and advice they need to grow.
Almost half of the EBRD’s annual investment and banking projects each year are directed at such enterprises. This results in a meaningful impact on individual companies and local business environments as a whole. We have helped more than 30,000 small businesses access advisory services – over 2,000 a year– while our financing through partner banks has reached hundreds of thousands more. This means that over €1 billion is channelled to over 300,000 micro and small businesses each year.
We also understand that most small businesses sell their goods and services locally. So we work with our partners to lend in local currencies, reducing the exposure of firms and the wider financial sector to foreign exchange risk. Our local currency programme is currently active in 15 countries.
Thanks to our strong presence on the ground, in 30 economies from Morocco to Mongolia, we have built a wealth of knowledge and experience with small enterprises.
We bring this experience to bear through a country-focused approach, developing new products and approaches that really work.
2020 Results- 2,273 advisory projects to SMEs - €71.3 mln donor funding raised by the SME F&D Group - 146 SBI-eligible investment operations (35.5% of all EBRD projects by number) - €868 mln Annual Bank Investment for SME-related projects (7.9% of all EBRD ABI) - €3.7 bln in operating assets under SBI (both direct and indirect MSME exposure) |
