June 10 (SeeNews) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said on Wednesday it is providing an unsecured multicurrency loan of 5 million euro ($5.63 million) to Romania's Agricover Credit IFN, a non-banking financial institution specialised in financing of the local agricultural sector.
The loan was approved by the bank's board on June 2 under the Resilience Framework, which is part of the bank's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the EBRD said in a project description posted on its website.
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The financing will provide Agricover Credit IFN with additional comfort supporting its lending plan to small and medium-sized agribusinesses. The project will strengthen the company's funding position and will allow it to pursue growth strategy aimed at assisting smaller farmers, continue providing support to agri-business SME clients and thus reduce the risk profile of the end-borrowers, the EBRD said.
Agricover Credit IFN was established in Romania in June 2008. Its majority shareholder is Agricover Holding Group with a 99.99% stake.
In 2017, EBRD injected lei 32 million lei ($7.45 million/ 7 million euro) in the group's capital for a 12.7% stake and in 2018 approved the first loan to Agricover Credit IFN of 15 million euro in Romanian lei equivalent, in two tranches.
($=0.8875 euro)