TAJIKISTAN: REAP Cleantech Finance workshop for Financial Institutions
On Wednesday, 07 December REAP team conducted a Cleantech Finance workshop for Financial Institution in Tajikistan. The event was conducted in The Rumi Hotel in Dushanbe. The REAP Cleantech Finance aimed to support financial institutions (FIs) to gain a thorough understanding and develop the groundwork to deliver tailored financing for cleantech investments by agri-food production and processing micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Participants gained a better understanding of challenges facing MSMEs financing sustainable consumption and production (SCP) improvements. FIs also learnt some basic financial tools to laying the basis for developing financial instruments for cleantech financing of resource efficiency in agri-food production and processing in Tajikistan.
The REAP team also showcased successful low-to-no-cost implementation case studies which saving resources and generating monetary savings for MSMEs. In this context REAP team also presented some high-cost SCP investment cases that can bring higher savings in MSMEs and for these high-cost investments MSMEs need finance, so FIs can design and develop Financial products to cater to these needs.
Over 30 participants from 13 Financial Institutions were present at the workshop, including some of the development financial institutions like JICA and EBRD.
As a part of the workshop, in group work FIs detailed out their financial schemes for MSMEs and discussed advantages and disadvantages for them and also for MSMEs. Also, in one of the groups works while discussing challenges to cleantech finance in Tajikistan, FIs mentioned following major points.
- Lack of financial literacy & poorly designed business plans by MSMEs
- Lack of collateral from borrowers
- Interest refinancing by the National Bank of Tajikistan
- Energy or resource efficient technologies not widely available in Tajikistan, and what are available are expensive.
- Lack of awareness among bank staff on the resource efficiency technologies and cleantech finance.
The event was very well appreciated by the FIs and also mentioned that these kinds of workshops are very rare but much needed to catch up with global changes in cleantech finance. Many financial institutions also showed interest in the one-to-one workshop for their staff on development of cleantech financial product prototyping. These one-to-one workshops are planned to happen in July 2023.
