Areas of Expertise

In support of enterprise expansion and job growth, the Project worked with leading financial institutions to increase the availability of debt and equity capital for SMEs. The Project embedded short-term advisors in several financial institutions (banks and private equity funds) to assist them in improving their capacity to provide financial services to SMEs.

Under a USAID Program IDG introduced franchising as a business development strategy for Russian investors and entrepreneurs, financial institutions, and the government to introduce franchising and other licensed distribution strategies to Russia to create a large number of small-scale, start-up enterprises that mobilize primarily Russian capital and can expand in the absence of large-scale foreign investment.

The goal of this project was to assess how the current barriers and ow to increase access to financing for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). IDG provided recommendations to the USAID Mission on ways to strengthen current systems and explore future efforts including launching an agriculture-bond, linking Feed-the-Future and Power Africa, commercial bank lending, value chain businesses as financing providers, leasing, new financial products, mobile financial services, and financial-sector supervision.

Despite high demand for finance from micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), access to MSME finance remains low due to conservative lending practices of regulated commercial banks. The 32 Banks regulated by the Central Bank of Uganda do not offer loans accessible to MSMEs, IDGs analysis found that to remedy these conservative lending practices, USAID could review banking law and central bank regulations to identify and eliminate any impediments to sound rural lending and assist the Bank of Uganda in better implementing risk-based supervision.