IFC financing to micro, small, and medium enterprises in Europe and Central Asia

International Finance Corporation (IFC) is working to develop solutions to close the micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) financing gap, collaborating with 97 financial institutions (FIs) across 20 countries in Europe and Central Asia. As of June 2014, IFC committed a total of 3.1 billion dollars to MSME finance in the ECA region, 2.6 billion dollars for long term finance, 160.5 million dollars for funds supporting MSMEs, and 333.1 million dollars for trade finance. In fiscal year (FY) 2014 alone, IFC MSME commitments in the region were 1.0 billion dollars (up 11.7 percent from 917 million dollars in FY2013), 362 million dollars of which was attributed to long-term financing. By the end of calendar year (CY) 2013, IFC's MSME clients had 2.9 million micro loans outstanding in the ECA (up 33.1 percent from 2.2 million in CY2012), totaling 5.7 billion dollars (up 39.1 percent from 4.1 billion dollars in CY2012). Similarly, IFC's MSME clients had over 1.5 million small and medium loans outstanding by the end of CY2013 (up 14.4 percent from 1.3 million in CY2012), totaling 64.6 billion dollars in this region (up 10.8 percent from 58.3 billion dollars in CY2012).