devinitorg/iati-policy-markers huggingface dataset:
BID Facility IFC and the USAID propose to create the Balkans Infrastructure Development Facility (BID Facility), a multi-donor facility that will assist in development of private infrastructure in the Balkans region, enhance private sector participation and investments in infrastructure projects, and facilitate public private partnerships.  The BID Facility would help committed public entities (such as local governments and municipalities etc.) identify, analyze, structure, and develop viable and attractive infrastructure projects suitable for private sector investment and participation mainly in water and sanitation, transport, and energy sectors.  The BID Facility will help prepare infrastructure project proposals which have a reasonable potential to successfully attract private sector participation and financing.  The BID Facility will function as a revolving fund and will support project preparation funding throughout the project development process, from feasibility through transaction structuring, negotiation and financial closure.  At times, IFC may consider BID Facility projects for financing, but IFC would not be obligated to consider or provide such financing.     The Facility will be IFC managed and will initially begin operations with an office in Sofia, Bulgaria with a small core team of specialists supported by project specific consultants.  The BID Facility will be governed by a Board of Donor Representatives which will set the overall policies, guidelines and direction of the Facility.
Netafim Global 2 Netafim Ltd. (Netafim or the Company) is a global leader in technology-advanced smart irrigation solutions. The Company was founded in 1965 in the Negev desert in Israel. By trying to grow crops in desert soil, Netafim created the worlds first commercial dripper in 1966. Today Netafim has become the largest micro irrigation systems (MIS) provider globally. The expected Project-level outcome is its contribution to generating better yields for the local farmers and strengthening their resilience to climate shocks. The Project will also contribute to sustainability by promoting water used efficiency in agriculture in several water stressed regions.
GMFI Micro Enterprise Bank Kosovo Operating since January 2000, MEB Kosovo is a specialized provider of credit and financial services to private micro and small enterprises in Kosovo.  As of the end of May 2001, total credit provided was US$15.9 million equivalent, including a loan portfolio of over 1,200 accounts totalling US$5.7 million equivalent, with an average loan size of about US$4,700 and average maturity of ten months.  Portfolio quality is high, with the end-May arrears rate reported at 0.5%; the sectoral distribution of the portfolio was 65% to trading enterprises, 20% to the light manufacturing sector, and 15% to the service sector.  The bank reported net income of US$3.7 million in 2000.  MEB Kosovo has experienced an exceptionally high rate of deposit mobilization.  Customer deposits were US$110.0 million as of end-May, representing 36,563 depositors.    Although initially developed to provide microcredit, MEB Kosovo quickly has become a key part of the payments infrastructure of Kosovo -- an infrastructure which was wiped out by the conflict in the former Yugoslav province.  The bank has, in addition, developed a considerable international transfer business and has attracted a large deposit base of over US$100.0 million.  This is a major achievement, considering the widespread losses depositors suffered due to wartime confiscation of savings accounts, and the collapse of pyramid savings schemes during the early 1990s.  It is estimated that about 90% of Kosovo''s money supply is still held outside the banking system.  In common with the other parts of the former Yugoslavia, therefore, there is a need to support new, professionally-managed and credible financial institutions in Kosovo which can be trusted as both deposit-taking and lending institutions.  Following its very successful launch, MEB Kosovo strategy in 2001/02 is to build on its province-wide presence by establishing itself as the main lender to the MSE sector.   Microfinance schemes have shown a major positive impact in reducing poverty and unemployment in emerging markets worldwide, and -- in recognition of this strong developmental impact -- almost all multilateral and bilateral institutions and donor agencies are actively promoting microfinance schemes.  The developmental impact of commercially-run microcredit programs in particular, on post-confict transition economy populations with little or no access to formal credit institutions has been well-demonstrated by IFC''s microcredit investments in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania.  IFC''s developmental strategy in the field is to attract serious private sector investment in microfinance by demonstrating that microfinance can be a viable commercial proposition.   The proposed investment in MEB Kosovo is expected to be strongly developmental -- in terms of its economic impacts, stimulus for business reconstruction, employment generation, confidence-building in the banking sector, and introduction of commercially-oriented microfinance techniques to Kosovo.
Microfinance Downscaling Facility The Microfinance Downscaling Facility (the facility) is an investment and technical assistance project designed to support commercial banks in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that have a strategic interest in expanding their lending operations to microentrepreneurs (downscaling). The facility, undertaken in collaboration with ACCION International, would establish downscaling units at commercial banks designed to attend the underserved entrepreneurial population. At the conclusion of the program, participating banks are expected to serve at least 100,000 low-income microentrepreneurs with appropriate and sustainable financial services.
Kreditech Project Kreditech (or the Company) is an online, technology-enabled consumer lending platform based in Hamburg, Germany. The Company uses predictive data analytics and a machine learning algorithm to assess the creditworthiness of consumers without an existing credit bureau score, in order to extend credit to those who do not have access to traditional financing options. Kreditech currently extends loans to consumers primarily in Poland, Spain, Czech Republic, Russia, and Mexico.  The Company is seeking to raise up to EUR 100 million of equity capital to fund operations and expansion into other emerging market countries. IFC is considering an investment of up to EUR 10 million in the Series C equity round. 1. Access to credit to unbanked individuals: The investment in Kreditech will help provide financing to a demographic segment of mostly first time borrowers, from sub-prime to prime, with no existing scoring or selection/qualification. This is particularly important in Emerging Markets where the financial infrastructure not as developed.  2. Expansion of digital payments: Kreditech, through its non-lending products, will encourage electronic payments rather than use cash. This will help to develop local country payment infrastructure, empowering the e-commerce sector. Moreover, making payments electronically has been shown to generate efficiency and promote economic development.
Central America Growth Fund Summary Of Project Information (SPI)       Project Name    Central America - Central America Growth Fund      RegionLatin America and Caribbean   Sector   Project No009842   Projected Board DateNovember 25, 1999   Company NameCentral America Growth Fund   Technical Partner and/or Major Shareholders    The Central America Growth Fund is an initiative of the Provident Group, an investment banking firm headquartered in New York with offices in San Francisco, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Steve Carlson is chairman and CEO, and Hans Heckman is president and COO. Providents partners in charge of the fund are Christopher Harley and Erik Peterson.     Project Cost Including proposed IFC investment    Total project cost will be up to $50.0 million of which IFC will make an equity investment of the lesser of $10.0 million or 25% of total commitments.    Location of project and Description of site: Central America.    Description of Company and Purpose of Project    The project aims at establishing the Central America Growth Fund, an up to $50 million private equity fund focused on Central America. The fund would target medium-size enterprises with long-term growth and capital appreciation potential. IFCs will have seats on both the advisory and investment committees of the fund. The fund will fill an important gap in the menu of financing alternatives available to companies in the region, which are now facing capital constraints. In addition, the fund will help improve corporate governance standards in the region by requiring portfolio companies to follow international best practices.    Environmental Category and Issues    This is an FI Type 2 project. The fund manager, Provident, will be required to undertake an environmental review of each subproject. The fund manager must participate in environmental training as may be required by IFC, develop an environmental management system, and provide an annual environmental performance report to IFC.        Date SPI sent to InfoShop     October 18, 1999      This Summary of Project Information is prepared and distributed to the public in advance of consideration of the proposed transaction by the Corporations Board of Directors.  It is provided for the purpose of enhancing the transparency of IFCs activities and should not be construed as presuming the outcome of IFC Board consideration.    For Additional Information contact:     Corporate Relations Unit    Telephone: (202) 473-7711   Fax: (202) 974-4384
RA Energy II Access to Clean Power Fund (ACPF or the Fund) is a US$150mn fund (in the process of being raised), which will extend debt financing to companies providing renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions in the retail and off-grid Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) sector, and in the commercial and industrial sector, both part of the Distributed Generation (DG) market. ACPF is the scale-up of the Energy Access Fund (EAF), into which IFC invested in 2015. The most significant, expected project-level outcome is increased access to energy by un(der)served households and SMEs with unreliable access to affordable energy, and increased access to financing for manufacturers and distributors of DG. The Project is expected to target predominantly lower income segments and will contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Beyond the Project, IFC anticipates that the Project will enhance financial integration and inclusiveness through the demonstration and market enabling channels.
Global Warehouse Finance Program The proposed Project, Global Warehouse Finance Program (GWFP or the Program), aims at assisting the IFCs existing and prospective client banks increase their pre-export financing to the agriculture sector in emerging markets.  IFC intends to support pre-shipment financing needs of the agriculture industry by offering a warehouse financing facility to local banks.    Commodities are stored in warehouses before shipment, and in most of the cases, farmers/traders/exporters need to sell the production earlier than they desire to meet their urgent financial needs or are forced to arrange financing through credit lines with local banks with fixed assets as collateral.  IFC aims to support the agriculture sector by encouraging banks to introduce the commodity backed lending skills.   In particular, IFC intends to promote such commodity financing skills to local banks in the countries where tradable and negotiable Warehouse Receipts (WHR) exist, since WHR-based financing will encourage the move toward a more transparent agricultural marketing system for export markets.  A WHR is an instrument which can be used as a form of portable collateral to request a loan from a bank, and is issued by the warehouse operator, when the commodities are stored.  In those countries where WHR system does not exist, the Collateral Management Agreement (CMA) or Stock Monitoring Agreement (SMA) is currently used by banks.  CMA or SMA is a trilateral agreement signed between a bank, a commodity owner, and a warehouse operator.  Although this is not a transferable/negotiable instrument, for the initial stage, IFC will accept financing requests from those countries that are using other forms of securities, such as CMA or SMA.    The Program takes the local bank risk in developing countries, and will be providing liquidity to those banks for on-lending to commodity owners against WHR or CMA/SMA as collateral or by providing guarantees to other funders to provide funding in local/foreign currency to banks.  The Program would focus on pre-export financing but also includes post-import financing and selectively inventory financing for domestic sales. The Program is expected to have a very high development impact in four critical areas:   (i)	The Program will increase access to finance for banks to assist the agriculture sector which is an important driving force of the economy, i.e. in IDA countries.  The Program will promote the commodity backed lending skills among local banks and avail more working capital to farmers to finance their harvest inventory management; (ii)	The Program will contribute significantly to private sector development of the local banks lending to the agriculture sector and job creation by supporting farmers side of the agricultural value chain; (iii)	The Program will also enable IFC to identify other investment opportunities such as supply chain financing and financing of warehouses; and (iv)	In the countries where IFC will facilitate the Advisory Services to establish the WHR system, IFC can play a catalytic role to infrastructure the investment climate for an efficient and transparent agriculture market system.
SCB-Mezz Trade As a result of the financial crisis, flows of trade finance to emerging markets countries have fallen in excess of the reduction in trade flows.  The global reduction in trade finance is mostly the result of scarcity of capital, reduction in liquidity, and exit of certain market participants.  In order to expand its trade finance operations in emerging markets, Standard Chartered Bank has approached IFC with a request to provide capital relief on a revolving portfolio of trade related exposures, through a mezzanine risk sharing investment of up to $60 million.  The portfolio will consist of a mix of funded and unfunded trade finance exposures to banks and financial institutions to support trade in emerging markets. The development impact of this transaction is expected to be strong in terms of:    - Increase trade volumes and production with an increase supply of trade finance.  This will in turn contribute to job preservation and economic development; - Help lessen the impact of the crisis on businesses in emerging markets by providing them with access to trade finance; and -Strong demonstration effect for other investors to provide capital relief to banks engaged in trade finance.
Apeel Science Founded in 2012, Apeel Sciences is a Santa Barbara, California-based company that has developed a plant-derived coating that helps fresh produce growers, suppliers, and retailers maintain produce quality and extend shelf life, which minimize food waste across the produce value chain. IFC anticipates that the Project would result in increased exports of fruits and vegetables and GHG emission avoidance, achieved by deploying at scale an edible plant-derived coating that extends the shelf-life of fruits and vegetables, thereby reducing food losses. Furthermore, the Project has the potential to strengthen the integration of local suppliers, especially from Mexico, into the international, and potentially local, fruits and vegetables value chains.
The Currency Cloud Limited IFC is seeking to invest in Currencycloud which operates a global B2B payments platform that reduces the friction in cross-border payments. IFCs invests to support the Companys expansion, in particular in Emerging Markets. The most significant, expected Project outcome is an improvement in the quality of cross-border payments (transparency, cost, channels). Beyond the Project, IFC anticipates that the investment will promote competitiveness in the global cross-border payments market through a demonstration and replication channel.
Ecom Corp Loan The proposed IFC investment is for up to US$50 million subordinated convertible C loan to ECOM Agroindustrial Corp. Ltd. (ECOM), an existing IFC client, for capital expenditures and general working capital purposes. The investment would enable ECOM to strengthen its balance sheet with permanent working capital and continue to invest into improving its sustainable global supply chain. The proposed investment is expected to have the following Development Impact: (i) increase farmers'' income through training, improved access to market and farm productivity; (ii) improve access to finance for farmers and their ability to implement capital expenditure at farm level with multi-year paybacks periods where ECOM extends credit to smallholder farmers; (iii) promotion of sustainable/ traceable cocoa and coffee leading to better quality products and potential premiums for small holder farmers.
Global Facility for Women Entrepreneurs The project is part of IFCs response to the global need to support and strengthen the underserved sector with the aim of supporting job creation and economic growth. Since 2010, IFCs Banking on Women (BoW) program has played an important role in establishing the womens market as a key underserved sector, through investments in relationship Financial Institutions as well as partnerships with multinational corporations, with the shared goal of promoting economic security for women entrepreneurs.    IFC is exploring financing solutions for women entrepreneurs in partnership with Goldman Sachs Foundation (GSF), with the goals of increasing access to finance for women-owned SMEs in emerging markets globally, and further demonstrating the commercial viability of investing in such women by mobilizing funding from other investors and donors.  IFC will invest up to US$100 million in the Facility. GSF intends to provide funding for junior tranche investments and advisory services. 1) Increasing access to finance to women-owned SMEs, an underserved segment, and supporting job creation through the financing of these women-owned SMEs; 2) Mobilization of capital from investors and donors to further demonstrate the commercial viability of investing in women entrepreneurs; 3)	Transforming the market through a demonstration effect to encourage FIs in the target markets to scale up lending to the women entrepreneur segment beyond the life of the proposed project; 4) Building the capacity of financial institutions to lend more effectively to the women entrepreneur segment; 5)	Access to LCY Commercial Longer Tenor Funding for FIs.
IFC - GIPDF 3 0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0.0000       The proposed project is the renewal of the operations of the Global Infrastructure Project Development Fund, also known as IFC InfraVentures, an initiative to support early-stage private and Public Private Partnership infrastructure projects commercially by (a) providing project development support; and (b) investing early-stage risk capital from an envelope of up to US$150 million under delegated authority. Investments made via IFC InfraVentures extend IFCs reach into the early development stages of potential projects, allowing IFC to act as a co-developer and to provide expertise in critical areas of the project development work, helping to structure balanced, bankable and sustainable infrastructure projects in markets where such investments are otherwise limited.   IFC InfraVentures   complements IFCs strategy of creating markets and maximizing finance for development by leveraging sustainable private sector solutions.          IFC InfraVentures typically requires prospective projects to meet one of the following criteria:         (i)         private infrastructure projects or pipelines of projects at an early stage of development, including pilot or proof of concept business models;     (ii)        projects in the process of being tendered, where IFC InfraVentures would support prospective investors on a non-exclusive basis during the selection process to help ensure the bankability of the project, and then to help the winning sponsor finalize the development and bring the project to financial close;     (iii)      early stage private infrastructure projects or facilities which do not require a contractual relationship with a host government; and     (iv)      on a select basis, projects or facilities in which the initial engagement of IFC InfraVentures is directly with governments or state-owned entities to define an infrastructure project   in order to   attract a qualified private sector participant to further develop and implement the project.    The support provided by the IFC InfraVentures investments includes co-funding of and providing expertise in development activities, such as:     (i)         E&S impact and risk assessments and management programs;    (ii)        financial and legal structuring;    (iii)      feasibility, market and technical viability assessments; and    (iv)      mobilization of private debt and equity capital as well as of financial and political risk mitigation mechanisms.                IFC InfraVentures investee projects each undergo individual Summary of InfraVentures Project (SIVP) disclosure on IFCs website.
O3B Networks Limited O3b Networks Ltd. is a greenfield project company to manufacture, launch and operate a Medium Earth Orbital (MEO) Ka-band satellite constellation that will provide broadband connectivity and backbone services to emerging markets worldwide. Thanks the satellites proximity to earth, its innovative steerable spot beams and its equatorial orbit O3b will provide high quality, low cost internet connectivity at any location between 45 degrees latitude North and South. Increased and affordable access to communications and data services in emerging markets, in particular in land-locked countries and in remote areas; 
Combining O3b's whole-sale prices (which are 50 - 80% below current levels) with open-access and competitive retail markets is expected to lead to higher quality access at sharply lower cost to the end-user in emerging markets.  It is estimated that in those markets about 50% of access costs is related with international connectivity;
It is estimated that the Project has the potential to reduce end-user broadband access costs by more than 70% in remote areas or land-locked countries of Africa.