The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is expanding its Green Economy Financing Facility (GEFF), launched in Uzbekistan in 2019, to support green finance for small private-sector companies investing in green technology solutions.

Uzbekistan’s second-largest lender Uzsanoatqurilishbank (UzSQB) is the second financial institution in the country to join the facility. It is supported by grants provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance and the TaiwanBusiness-EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund. Designated consultants will help UzSQB develop a portfolio of GEFF projects and will work with individual borrowers to assist with their green transformation.  

UzSQB will receive an EBRD loan of up to US$ 25 million for on-lending to domestic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) willing to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation technologies and services. With a network of 45 branches and 170 outlets across Uzbekistan, UzSQB is well placed to support SMEs across the country, including in small villages and remote rural areas.

With the facility, the EBRD is contributing to Uzbekistan’s long-term decarbonisation strategy, jointly being developed with the Bank and designed to achieve carbon neutrality of the power sector by 2050. The cooperation is promoting environmentally friendly solutions and helping to address climate risks by enabling businesses and households to adapt to new technologies.

Moreover, the EBRD will help UzSQB to further expand lending to the local private sector, by providing guarantees or participating in investment projects. It will also help to widen the product range, facilitate UzSQB’s commercialisation and build the capacity of its lending specialists by offering new financial resources of up to US$ 20 million under a risk-sharing framework.

The GEFF is part of the EBRD’s commitment to scale up its climate and environmental finance under the Green Economy Transition (GET) approach, with the aim of becoming a majority green bank by 2025.

The GEFF programme operates through a network of more than 145 local financial institutions across 27 countries, supported by more than €4.6 billion of EBRD finance for 190,000 clients to date. These projects have led to annual CO2 emission reductions exceeding 8.6 million tonnes so far.