NIKA Project Partners, the service agency of the "Ukrainian Agribusiness Club" (UCAB), was selected to provide IFC’s Agri-Finance Project in Ukraine with expert advice and verifiable farm data that will be incorporated into lending instruments developed by the project that will increase bank lending to farmers.

Ukrainian banks hesitate to engage in agri-financing despite a large potential market in Ukraine due to a lack of understanding about agricultural production processes and corresponding financing needs of the farms. The IFC project in collaboration with UCAB will develop risk management tools to help bank loan officers understand agricultural production processes and confidently evaluate risks. The result will be greater access to finance for producers.

Alex Lissitsa, UCAB’s president, said it will help “break the ice between farmers and banks” and make interest rates for agricultural producers more affordable.

"Currently, farmers face great difficulties in getting financing for their development. Firstly, there is a big lack of understanding of complex agricultural production by bank credit committees. It leads to farmers’ loan applications being frequently rejected, also it increases the cost of borrowings and finally results in a significant underfunding of agricultural production in Ukraine," he stressed.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is implementing Ukraine’s Agri-Finance Project in partnership with the Austrian Finance Ministry and the Netherlands Agency for Economic Development (EVD). The main objective of the project is to increase access to finance for Ukrainian farmers by helping banks to better understand and evaluate their agricultural clients. The project will achieve this objective primarily through strengthening the skills of bank loan officers and credit analysts, giving them the understanding and tools to confidently lend to Ukrainian producers. Such strengthening will facilitate investment in Ukraine's agricultural sector. In addition, IFC’s special expertise in agri-insurance in Ukraine will be linked to the financing of agri-production credits, giving the bank a proven risk mitigation instrument that decreases the lending risk.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. We help countries in transition to achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, providing advisory services to businesses and governments, and mobilizing capital in the international financial markets. In fiscal 2011, amid economic uncertainty across the globe, we helped our clients create jobs, strengthen environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities — all while driving our investments to an all-time high of nearly $19 billion.