Bulgaria’s CIBANK will be able to provide BGN 200 M (around EUR 100 M) in loans to local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) over the next three years under a deal with the European Investment Fund (EIF), the EU Commission has announced.  

The EIF and CIBANK have signed the first COSME agreement in Bulgaria, benefiting from the support of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), through which the Investment Plan for Europe is being deployed by the European Commission and the EIB Group, the Commission said in a statement on Friday.

COSME is the EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises running from 2014 - 2020 with a planned budget of EUR 2.3 B.

CIBANK will provide the loans as a result of a guarantee from EIF under the COSME programme with financial backing from the EU Commission. The agreement will make it possible for CIBANK to support additional financing at favourable conditions to over 1,000 SMEs.

“This is fantastic news for Bulgarian businesses and the Bulgarian economy. In a very difficult economic environment we need as much investment as possible,” European Commission Vice-President Kristalina Georgieva commented.

“That is why we're using the EU budget to back BGN 200 million of lending to SMEs. I encourage companies to take advantage of these loans.”

CIBANK  CEO Peter Andronov, said at the signing ceremony: "We consider the signing of the COSME guarantee agreement between EIF and CIBANK as a further development of the successful partnership between the two institutions thus providing  an opportunity to hundreds of small and medium enterprises to realize their great business ideas at preferential terms  of financing."

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