Akbank has signed a total of four new agreements with ERBD and IFC, comprised of two loans for SMEs, an agreement to support foreign trade transactions and another one for the financing needs of small to medium businesses.
“We will continue to support women-led SMEs against the negative effects of the pandemic”
The loan signed under the TURWIB II program, which is the first agreement signed with the EBRD and aims to assist SMEs led by women-led SMEs, consists of US $50 million with a maturity of 2.5 years. Underlining that the new resource provided will be used to meet the capital and liquidity needs of women-led SMEs adversely affected by Covid-19, Levent Çelebioğlu, Executive Vice President of Akbank Corporate & Investment Banking stated, “While the negative economic effects of the pandemic continue both in the world and in our country, we continue to fulfil our responsibility in reducing these effects. At this stage, we wanted to allocate a special fund to women-led SMEs. In line with our corporate responsibility and sustainability strategy, we are aiming to reflect our gender equality goal of ensuring that our female and male stakeholders share equal opportunity and conditions on the field as much as in the corporate life. Therefore, with this loan, which will provide resources to women led SMEs, we are aiming to support them in the challenging competitive environment caused by the pandemic. Within the scope of the project, we think that we will facilitate the process with financing and consultancy services for women-led SMEs ”
“We have increased our sustainability-linked funding to over US $2 billion”
Çelebioğlu continued, “Akbank’s pioneering practices in sustainability are reflections of its global relationship network, high reputation and expertise in foreign borrowing transactions. This loan allows us to maintain Akbank’s leadership in the financial sector in terms of sustainability. With this funding, we have increased our sustainability-linked foreign funding to over US $2 billion.
The second area of cooperation is Akbank’s participation in the “Risk Sharing Framework Program”, which is developed and implemented in various countries by EBRD to support particularly small to medium-sized businesses. In line with the program, Akbank and EBRD will jointly lend to meet the financing needs of companies with certain characteristics. Furthermore, they will be able to provide joint financing in various maturities in different transaction types and structures, including Turkish Lira, Euro or US Dollar. In the transactions, which will be executed taking into consideration sustainability performances and objectives, financing will be implemented within the framework of the firms' working practices with Akbank and, along with Akbank’s financing opportunities, ERBD's financing opportunities will also be offered to these companies through Akbank.
In addition, in order to be able to keep facilitating the trade transactions of its customers in changing market conditions, Akbank strengthened its cooperation with the EBRD Trade Facilitation Program (TFP). Under the program, in line with Akbank and EBRD’s joint vision, transactions with sustainability (ESG) components will be prioritized.
“New loan agreement with IFC”
Akbank signed an agreement for new financing of US $50 million with a maturity of 3 years + 1 week within IFC’s (International Finance Corporation) Refugee Impacted Areas Project. Access to finance will be provided to support small businesses in 22 provinces, mainly in the south and southeast, identified under the project.
Mentioning their content with partnerships with EBRD and IFC, Levent Çelebioğlu underlined that they will evaluate the opportunities to create new funds for future transactions.