OREANDA-NEWS. May 24, 2011. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is providing USD 10 million in long-term debt financing to Ukraine’s Euro Leasing company to help it expand financing to small and medium-sized companies and farmers and improve their access to new, better-quality equipment.

IFC’s will help Euro Leasing, a leading private leasing company in Ukraine with a substantial exposure to the agribusiness sector, to finance new commercial vehicles and reach the local small and medium sized companies with new products.

“A key task for our company is to get access to international financial markets,” said Roman Ivanenko, Chairman of Euro Leasing. “We need to attract longer-term and more affordable external financing to be able to improve leasing conditions for our clients. Our cooperation with IFC is instrumental in enabling us to do so. It is also the first step to access international markets.”

IFC also will provide advisory services to help Euro Leasing develop innovative agri-finance leasing products. IFC has significantly contributed to the development of leasing activities in Ukraine by implementing an advisory project in 2004-2008. The project had helped raise market awareness about the leasing, assisted in making significant improvements to the legal framework and has led to introduction of several government-supported programs.

“This investment fits well with our strategy for Ukraine, which focuses on such priorities as supporting the financial sector and helping maximize the potential of agribusiness,” said Elena Voloshina, IFC’s head of operations in Ukraine. “We will provide the company with longer term funding than currently available on the market and will contribute to modernizing agricultural equipment in Ukraine.”

In agribusiness, IFC supports the entire value chain, from farm production to collection, processing and distribution, and carries out accompanying investments in agribusiness-related infrastructure and improving access to agro-finance in order to address the main bottleneck for the sector’s growth and generate broad sector impact. IFC has so far invested around USD 481 million in the country’s farming sector.