The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is launching a program to support women entrepreneurship in Georgia.
Over €50 million (130 million GEL) from the EBRD for credit lines was provided in a comprehensive programme of support for women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The program has been officially launched on the EBRD’s 24th Annual Meeting and Business Forum held in Tbilisi today and tomorrow. Today also marked a commitment by two Georgian banks to join the program.
The Bank of Georgia and TBC Bank, the two largest banks in the country, signed letters expressing their interest in joining the regional Women in Business programme, which covered Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
"We are delighted to launch the Women in Business Programme in Georgia today. We believe women’s entrepreneurship and women-led SMEs are an economic priority for ensuring sustainable growth," Managing Director for SME Finance and Development at the EBRD, Claudio Viezzoli said.
"The Bank of Georgia and TBC Bank are long-standing partners of the EBRD and I am pleased to see them ready to seize the opportunity of the women’s banking market,” he noted.
The Women in Business programme was the first product to be launched under the EBRD’s Small Business Initiative in the country.
"We will work closely with selected local banks to provide targeted financing products, responding to the needs of women-led businesses, which tend to be smaller than their male counterparts and operate in lower value-added sectors, " Director of the EBRD Small Business Support Charlotte Ruhe said.
She also noted that this was not just a question of promoting equality but also a question of economics.
"The EBRD helps local banks adapt their products to better serve their women clients and begin to seize the opportunity arising from the worldwide, multi-billion dollar women’s banking market,” she said.