Asia
Project Name: Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative (VNCI)
Client Name: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Location: Vietnam
Description of Work:
VNCI was a three-year economic growth project funded by USAID. Its premise was the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must be increased, if there is to be significant economic growth, and hence poverty alleviation, in Vietnam. The project has three components, which are creating a favorable SME policy environment, building SME capacity, and improving access to credit. Access to credit remains a growth constraint for many SMEs in Vietnam.
Engagement involved developing and implementing technical assistance for selected Vietnamese Joint Stock Banks, under the Access to Credit Component of the VNCI Project. While SME access to credit was one of three components of VNCI, it will be integrated with the other two components, SME policy environment and SME capacity building/cluster initiatives. As such, the training and technical assistance initiatives for banks took into account the financing needs of firms from VNCI’s cluster and policy initiatives; as well as policy constraints for SME lending.
Project Name: SME Lending Risk Management Training
Client Name: Techcombank
Location: Vietnam
Description of Work:
Engagement involved delivering a SME Lending Risk Management Training Workshop multiple times to Techcombank’s middle management staff in Hanoi, HCMC and Da Nang. The SME Lending Risk Management Training Workshop was an intensive five-day program, designed to provide the lending and credit management staff a comprehensive understanding of the credit process, including gathering relevant information from customers, evaluating loan requests, assessing a company’s ability to service debt, structuring loans, and administering a portfolio of SME loans. The program, involving learning by doing, is intended to increase retention and facilitate the use of the information, concepts and techniques presented in the program.
Europe and Central Asia
Project Name: Enhancing Small and Medium Enterprise Performance Project (ESP)
Client Name: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Location: Croatia
Description of Work:
Assess the local financial institutions and markets to determine the feasibility of a mezzanine financing product in Croatia, specifically through HBOR.
If mezzanine financing is a viable product, prepare a report detailing the new financing product, including instruction/guidance for its use, as well as coverage of any issues that may affect its launch.
Project Name: Bosnia Reconstruction Finance Facility (BRFF)
Client Name: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Location: Bosnia & Herzegovina
Description of Work:
The objective of the Bosnia Reconstruction Finance Facility (“BRFF”) project was to provide technical assistance to indigenous private sector enterprises and financial institutions in order to overcome market impediments that prohibited Bosnian SMEs from accessing credit required to address their working capital and capital expenditure needs following the Bosnian war.
Engaged on numerous assignments between 1996 and 1998 designed to enable SMEs greater access credit and banking services. The assignments involved working with the entrepreneurs to refine their business and financing plans, assessing credit request, preparing underwriting memorandums, providing recommendation to loan committee regarding credit request from Bosnian SMEs, developing industry specific loan programs, and conduct training programs for entrepreneurs, lenders, and technical assistance providers, and providing mentoring services for Bosnian entrepreneurs and bankers.
Underwriting and advisory services were provided for enterprises in several industrial sectors including but not limited to the following: agricultural, wood processing and forestry, machinery, meat processing, dairy, consumer products, textile, and services sectors.
DKG Capacity Building Engagements (read more)
DKG Financial and Structural Reform Engagements (read more)