Kosovo Agri-Finance

completed

The Project will focus on the identification of the most profitable agriculture value chains in Kosovo and simultaneously build: a) the supply side of finance by building financial institutions capacity, and b) the demand side of finance by preparing farmers to meet bank lending requirements. To do this, the Project will increase financial institution knowledge of agriculture, best practice lending and agriculture specific financial product design; develop digital tools to improve risk management to finance micro, small and medium farmers, and mitigate agriculture risks through climate smart finance. The Project will enhance agriculture lending processes by designing and integrating agricultural finance platform to digital decision support systems, facilitating the decision making for financial institutions in argi-lending. Through climate smart agriculture financing opportunities, the Project will reduce negative impacts on the environment (reduce GHG emissions), increase crop resilience and increase crop productivity in the country by the development of new climate smart financial products. The overall objective of the Project is to increase access to finance for farmers, employ digital tools, and mitigate weather risks with Climate Smart Agriculture Finance. The Project will achieve the objective by focusing on the following specific components: 1) facilitate access to agriculture finance aiming at building agriculture lending capacity of financial institutions in Kosovo for efficient agri-lending; 2) support financial institutions to improve agriculture lending procedures by designing and integrating digital data-based decision support systems and non-financial services (weather, prices, et) for agri-MSMEs to better manage their agriculture businesses; and 3) developing Climate Smart Agriculture Finance to expand bank lending while creating resiliency and sustainability of Kosovo agriculture to mitigate and adapt to climate change.