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EBRD expands Tajik microlending project
Addition of new bank branch marks TMSEF’s second anniversary
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is marking the second
anniversary of its fast-expanding Tajikistan Micro and Small Enterprise
Finance Facility (TMSEF) by bringing a 24th bank branch into the programme.
The Gissar branch of AgroInvestBank – one of four major Tajik banking chains
to participate -- joins TMSEF in November 2005. It is especially significant
that the programme is expanding in rural areas such as Gissar, giving the
agricultural community easier access to finance. Participating banks can offer
MSE loans to local entrepreneurs for sums from $50 to $30,000. More than
four-fifths of loans made so far are for less than $5,000, and more than a
third for less than $1,000.
Launched on 19 November 2003, the $7 million TMSEF has been in such strong
demand with Tajik small business that, by October 2005, 7,200 such loans for
nearly $20 million had been disbursed. The loans enable the smallest
entrepreneurs – more than half of them women, often traders buying goods
around Central Asia or in China or Dubai for resale at home – to expand
operations. In September and October alone, a total of over 1,200 loans, worth
almost $4 million, were disbursed by 207 loan officers trained as part of the
programme.
Microlending stimulates job creation, poverty alleviation and grass-root
economic development. The Bank’s facility is the largest MSE initiative in
Tajikistan, and as of September 2005 had created or helped to maintain an
estimated 19,000 new jobs. Participants are Tajiksodirot Bank, Eskhata,
TajPromBank and AgroInvestBank.
Co-financed by the IFC and the Swiss SECO, this is the fourth project of its
kind in Central Asia, following KSBP in Kazakhstan, KMSEF in Kyrgyzstan and
J-USBP in Uzbekistan.
Technical assistance is financed by Britain’s DFID, USAID, the European Union
and the Early Transition Country Fund to support the partner banks in training
loan officers, setting up new MSE units, building up MSE loan portfolios,
streamlining lending procedures and developing necessary skills and capacity
to provide creditworthy MSEs with swift and adequate access to finance.
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