MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: EU, FMO to Guarantee $86m in Lending to Migrants, Women, Youth in Africa, Europe via “Nasira” Program

The EU’s European Commission recently signed a contract with the Dutch development bank, which is known by the acronym FMO, to support FMO’s Nasira guarantee program, which promotes lending to entrepreneurs in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa who represent one or more of the following groups: migrants, women and youth. Nasira guarantees loans by retail financial institutions to micro-, small and medium-sized businesses owned by members of these groups. FMO will also deliver technical assistance to both the financial intermediaries and the end-borrowers. The European Commission agreement includes “up to EUR 75 million [USD 85.6 million] in guarantees and up to EUR 8 million [USD 9.1 million] in Technical Assistance…”.

Established in 1970, FMO is 51-percent held by the Dutch government and 49-percent by private sector institutions. The bank works toward the UN sustainable development goals by placing debt and equity investments in sectors such as agribusiness, financial institutions, energy and capacity development. In the first half of 2018, the bank had a net profit of EUR 124 million (USD 141 million) on a portfolio of EUR 9 billion (USD 10.2 billion).

By Umit Naz Deryaoglu, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

FMO press release
https://www.fmo.nl/news-detail/9f950990-a9a6-4de6-b04c-ec8bbc101d62/fmo-signs-eur-75-mln-guarantee-program-nasira-at-high-level-forum-africa-europe

NASIRA homepage
http://www.nasira.info

FMO financial report
https://www.fmo.nl/about-us/reports

Do you know that MicroCapital publishes the MicroCapital Monitor newspaper each month? Find out more at https://www.microcapital.org/products-page.