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In India, our MSME Growth, Innovation and Inclusive Finance Project improved access to finance for MSMEs in three vital but underserved segments: early stage/startups, services, and manufacturing. Overall, stakeholders’ consultations suggest that the iSME project could play an even larger role in the future financing of the Venture Capital (VC) sector by supporting existing VCs and emerging players, including increasing attention on a fund of funds approach, which could also cover growth funds (later stage and private equity). To date, 60 out of 174 grantees had leveraged the iSME funding to raise a total of $13.1 million from various funding sources, a leverage ratio of 5.3 times. As of August 2019, iSME’s co-investment fund has invested $10.23 million across 22 investments and has been able to leverage $25.47 million in co-financing, demonstrating its ability to crowd in private sector financing and expand the market for early stage equity finance in Lebanon. In Lebanon, the Innovative Small and Medium Enterprises (iSME) project is a $30 million investment lending operation providing equity co-investments in innovative young firms in addition to a grant funding window for seed stage firms. Early Stage Innovation Finance provides equity and debt/quasi-debt to start up or high growth firms which may otherwise not be able to access bank financing.Partial Credit Guarantee Schemes (PCGs) – the design of PCGs is crucial to SMEs’ success, and support can be provided to design and capitalize such facilities.SME Lines of Credit provide dedicated bank financing – frequently for longer tenors than are generally available in the market – to support SMEs for investment, growth, export, and diversification.Knowledge management tools and flagship publications on good practice, successful models and policy frameworks.Advocacy for SME finance at global level through participating and supporting G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion, Financial Stability Board, International Credit Committee for Credit Reporting on SME Finance related issues.Policy work, analytical work, and other Advisory Services can also be provided in support of SME finance activities.Introducing innovation in SME finance such as e-lending platforms, use of alternative data for credit decisioning, e-invoicing, e-factoring and supply chain financing.Improving credit infrastructure (credit reporting systems, secured transactions and collateral registries, and insolvency regimes) which can lead to greater SME access to finance.Implementation support of initiatives such as development of enabling environment, design and set up of credit guarantee schemes.Financial sector assessments to determine areas of improvement in regulatory and policy aspects enabling increased responsible SME access to finance.Our approach is holistic, combining advisory and lending services to clients to increase the contribution that SMEs can make to the economy including underserved segments such as women owned SMEs.Īdvisory and Policy Support for SME finance mainly includes diagnostics, implementation support, global advocacy and knowledge sharing of good practice. The financing gap is even larger when micro and informal enterprises are taken into account.įormal MSME Finance Gap in Developing CountriesĪ key area of the World Bank Group’s work is to improve SMEs’ access to finance and find innovative solutions to unlock sources of capital. About half of formal SMEs don’t have access to formal credit. Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa regions, in particular, have the highest proportion of the finance gap compared to potential demand, measured at 87% and 88%, respectively. The gap volume varies considerably region to region. East Asia And Pacific accounts for the largest share (46%) of the total global finance gap and is followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (23%) and Europe and Central Asia (15%). The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that 65 million firms, or 40% of formal micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries, have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year, which is equivalent to 1.4 times the current level of the global MSME lending. SMEs are less likely to be able to obtain bank loans than large firms instead, they rely on internal funds, or cash from friends and family, to launch and initially run their enterprises.
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