Co-financed by the Italian Government’s contribution to the CEI Know-how Exchange Programme (KEP) through the CEI Fund at the EBRD and by the Autonomous Region Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), the recently approved project Financial Facilities for SMEs: Training and Capacity Building for Business Support Organisations in non-EU Member States of the Central European Initiative - FIT4SMEs II will be implemented by Informest from October 2011 to March 2012.
The assignment belongs to the second part of a larger programme - developed by Informest in cooperation with the CEI – aimed at strengthening the capacities of business support organisations (BSOs) in CEI non-EU recipient countries: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine. Thanks to the work undertaken by the first project, the beneficiary BSOs have been identified. Moreover, Informest has developed a study where information on facilities of International Financial Institutions (IFI) available in each recipient country is presented. The project aims to enable BSOs to provide comprehensive assistance to small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in the area of access to finance. Special attention is paid to instruments made available by IFIs such as the World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Drawing from outputs of the first part of the programme, the assignment will enable the preparation of practical trainings to further familiarise recipients with available financial facilities, the role of local financial intermediaries, requirements for accessing funding by SMEs, and others. The project will also provide the opportunity to analyse successful case studies and identify a number of SMEs which, in the next phase of the programme, will receive dedicated assistance in preparing business plans and accessing necessary funding. For more information: www.fit4smes.net