EU Grant and Loan Program to Begin in June

TBILISI – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Director for the Caucasus, Moldova and Belarus, Bruno Balvanera, on Monday announced that the EU’s Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreement to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises would be signed later this week.

Balvanera said the long process of negotiations between the EU and EBRD has already been completed and the DCFTA program’s total cost for Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine would amount to 200 million Euros.

The program includes grants and a system for obtaining loans to improve corporate governance and quality of production for representatives of the region’s Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

The program also aims to improve the quality of production and infrastructure and bring them in line with European standards for export-oriented companies as well as for import replacement enterprises.

The EBRD is planning to organize a forum to introduce the terms of the program to local entrepreneurs in late May and launch the program in June, according to eugeorgia.info.

By Eka Karsaulidze

Edited by Nicholas Waller