Belarusky Narodny Bank (Belarusian People’s Bank) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development signed an agreement to provide BNB-Bank with syndicated loan of 20 million US dollars on 9 August 2016. Belarusky Narodny Bank will allocate the received funds to private lending business development.
The participants of the transaction are European financial institutions; some of them enter the Belarusian market for the first time. The transaction structurally consists of two parts: 5 and 15 million US dollars. 5 million US dollars are provided directly by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and another 15 million are provided by four European financial institutions: FMO (Dutch development bank), Triodos Investment Managment (Netherlands), Bank im Bistum Essen eG (Germany) and the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE) (Germany).
The uniqueness of the transaction is that such a large sum is involved for the first time by BNB-Bank from a wide range of new participants from the Western European countries that offered attractive conditions, including a long period of lending, which is up to 4 years.
“This is a landmark transaction for the EBRD and BNB Bank, as well as for the private business development in Belarus. Through the use of a credit line small and medium businesses will have access to long-term financing, which is critically important for the development and expansion of local private companies,” said Head of EBRD's Financial Institutions team in Belarus Valdas Vitkauskas.
FMO Senior Portfolio Analyst Evangelos Alamaniotis drew attention to the importance of the syndicated transaction in terms of the FMO entrance to the market of Belarus. “FMO welcomes the opportunity to support BNB-Bank that has established itself as a well-functioning bank, focused on supporting the private sector in Belarus,” stressed Evangelos Alamaniotis.
According to the August data, the volume of attracted funds from foreign investors by BNB-Bank, taking into account the new deal, reached 76 million US dollars.
Source: bnb.by