SME GUARANTEE FACILITY (REGIONAL ACP)

approved

The project is a regional unfunded risk sharing facility ("the Facility") which aims at contributing to bridge the financial services gap for SMEs in ACP countries. Several individual risk sharing agreements will be signed with selected local banks under the framework of the Facility. These operations will provide the banks with a partial credit risk guarantee covering up to 50% of the principal losses incurred under their portfolios of eligible SME loans. The project forms part of the Global SME Finance Facility in which IFC and EIB will be Anchor Investors. KfW and other investors are also expected to participate in the Global Facility. DFID will support the project, among other, by funding capacity building schemes for the participating local banks.