📋 Tender Overview
Building on Switzerland’s experience with innovative access to finance avenues, this programme facilitates mobilising green finance for small and medium sized enterprises in Bangladesh. The focus is on enterprises that have a strong commitment to reducing their environmental footprint and to providing green products and services in order to address climate change and reduce environmental degradation.
Country/region Topic Period Budget
Bangladesh
Employment & economic development
SME development
Financial policy
Business support & economic inclusion
01.06.2023 - 31.10.2027
CHF 6’450’000
The project in brief
Background Bangladesh’s geographic composition, coupled with the high population density, enhances vulnerability to climate change, resulting in anticipated losses between 2% and 9% of annual GDP by the middle to end of the century. Small and medium sized enterprises, accounting for over 40% of employment, are greatly impacted by climate change. Due to limitations in size, they often face challenges when it comes to ‘greening’ their operations and lack confidence to invest in environmental friendly technology. The Central Bank has adopted a policy to increase lending for small and medium sized enterprises, with targeted green financing. However, access to financial services remain severely constrained due to perceived higher risks by the financial institutions, the weak outreach of banks, lack of appropriate lending structures and risk management strategies. Concrete polices and frameworks are in place but enforcement is weak. Also, despite the eligibility to avail many global funds for tackling climate change, Bangladesh struggles to tap into these resources, mainly due to the lack of proper instruments and channels for mobilisation. Hence creating awareness, developing capacity and mobilising stakeholders must happen in parallel to facilitating access to green finance to ensure sustainable impact. In summary, the issue is not only about availaibility of resources. The challenges lies with accessibility.
Objectives The overall objective of the programme is to promote green financing and enhance the capacity of small and medium sized enterprises to develop and deliver low carbon and climate-resilient solutions and improve environmental performance that will ultimately increase resilience of communities, enterprises, and the overall small and medium sized enterprises support ecosystem in Bangladesh.
Target groups Direct beneficiaries:
200 Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (approx. 20% women-led/women focused)
Financial Institutions
Impact Investors
Indirect, but ultimate beneficiaries: 200’000 low income households beneficiaries will be served by these small and medium sized enterprises, including, but not limited to, clients and employees.
Medium-term outcomes Outcome 1: Small and medium sized enterprises, in particular, women-focused enterprises better cope with and contribute to the consequences of climate change mitigat
