A review of the European Investment Bank's lending to SSE in the ACP countries

Peter Carter, Maurizio Innamorati, Stephen McCarthy

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has recently undertaken a major review of its lending through financial intermediaries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries covered by the Lomé Convention. This paper discusses the results of that review, focusing on the characteristics
and performance of the small and medium enterprises funded by the intermediaries.The analysis draws on three sources of information which broadly correspond with the three main sections of the paper. The first is the EIB's own databases which record the principal features of all such global
loans as well as of the allocations made for individual projects from them. Second, is an analysis of the individual files of about 120 randomly chosen sub-projects, or around a fifth of the total, designed to give a more detailed picture of the characteristics of the projects financed, as
seen at the time of appraisal. Third, for the same random sample, a post-implementation review has been conducted based on questionnaires sent to the local financial institutions concerned. From the latter some general conclusions have been drawn which are set out in the last section.