Nov 22, 2018

The Brazilian Social Development Bank (BNDES) had US$ 750 million approved by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in a fundraising effort to finance the increase in productivity of more than 4,900 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) in Brazil. 

The funds are intended for the lines of credit listed in the MSME Developer Channel, a digital platform that allows entrepreneurs to submit online financing applications to accredited financial agents, to operate with BNDES. 

In total, US$ 900 million in credit will be available for national MSMEs, as BNDES will also contribute with US$ 150 million from its own resources under the scope of its partnership with IDB. Eligible enterprises will be those that demonstrate administrative, technical, financial, legal and environmental capacity to carry out investments. 

Some of the resources may also be applied to BNDES's efforts of fostering innovative solutions for fintechs used in credit analysis, identification of potential clients, integration to digital platforms, impact assessment, blockchain and digital currencies, fraud prevention and other tools to facilitate the granting of credit to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. 

This joint action of BNDES with IDB seeks to address one of the greatest challenges faced by MSMEs, which is access to public and private credit. Enterprises of this size are one of the priorities listed by BNDES in its 2018-2023 Corporate Planning, and already account for half of the funds disbursed by the Bank. From January to September this year, MSMEs received R$ 21.7 billion from a total of R$ 43.6 billion disbursed by BNDES, a 4% growth over the first nine months of last year.

This is the second operation approved by IDB under a conditional credit line opened to BNDES in December 2016, in the total amount of US$ 2.4 billion. It will now be submitted to BNDES's Board of Directors, to fulfill the necessary conditions for contracting and disbursing the financing. The first operation of this conditional credit line, which also corresponds to US$ 750 million, was approved at the end of 2016 to finance investments in renewable energy