By Vanora Bennett

The EBRD is lending €50 million(US$52.3million) to Moldova’s largest bank, maib, to reinforce its funding base in the challenging economic environment caused by the war on Ukraine and enable it to continue supporting the Moldovan economy, focussing on private businesses.

The €50 million financing package, signed at the EBRD’s Annual Meeting in Marrakesh by Giorgi Shagidze, Chief Executive Officer of maib, and Francis Malige, the EBRD’s Managing Director for Financial Institutions, is composed of two elements.

€15 million go to extending MAIB’s participation in the EU4Business-EBRD Credit Line, aiming to finance investments by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into upgrades of technology, making them more competitive and better able to export their products. The EU is complementing the EBRD financing with grants and free-of-charge technical assistance to borrowers under its EU4Business initiative. This loan will contribute to the aims of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) Economic and Investment Plan, which include supporting 50,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Moldova. Maib, which has been a leading implementer of this programme, has previously on-lent €30 million under it, supporting some 50 SME clients.

The remaining €35 million fall within the EBRD’s Resilience and Livelihoods framework – €2 billion pledged by the EBRD to support companies and countries directly or indirectly affected by the war on Ukraine. This loan will strengthen and diversify maib’s funding base. It will support maib in deploying finance to private businesses in Moldova during the crisis caused by the war on Ukraine.

Maib is a longstanding EBRD client, with a more than 30 per cent market share in Moldova. It offers a wide range of services to its 900,000 corporate, MSME and retail clients through a wide distribution network of 58 branches and 86 agencies and digital channels, employing 2,300 staff. Since 2018, maib’s largest minority shareholder has been a consortium of investors composed of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Invalda INVL, an asset management group in the Baltics, and Horizon Capital, an Emerging Europe-focused private equity fund manager.