BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 3
By Klavdiya Romakayeva - Trend:
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has allocated about $15 million for lending to businesses headed by women entrepreneurs in Uzbekistan, Trend reports with reference to Uzbek Dunyo news agency.
The Association of Business Women of Uzbekistan, with the support of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports and the EBRD, organized the First Forum "Support and Strengthening the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs in the Tourism Business" for women employed in tourism sector.
According to Head of the EBRD Small Business Consulting Program in Uzbekistan Sherzod Akbarov, in December 2020, the EBRD launched a program to support women's entrepreneurship in Uzbekistan, which is implemented in three main areas.
It is noted that the first area involves facilitating access to financial resources, in particular, the provision of credit lines to commercial banks for further lending to businesses headed by women entrepreneurs.
“EBRD conducts preparatory work with banks. For these purposes, about $15 million have been allocated to two banks - Ipoteka-Bank and Davr Bank. So we expect these banks to start active lending to this sector in the near future,” he said.
The second area is the discussion and development of policy measures to achieve gender equality. In particular, gender records and other statistical data are kept, on the basis of which targeted measures are formed to support women's entrepreneurship and, in general, to strengthen them economically.
Third, consulting services and grants are provided to cover the cost of attracting consultants, which include costs for business planning, marketing, operational consulting to the promotion of digitalization or the introduction of modern IT technologies in the business of ‘women's’ companies. Also, special emphasis is placed on promoting the "green" economy, that is, the use of energy-efficient technologies.
Another participant of the event, the chairman of the Association of Business Women of Uzbekistan Gulnora Makhmudova stressed that the tourism sector attracts about 30 percent of women.
It was emphasized that for Uzbekistan, where the tourism industry is one of the strategic ones for the country's economic development, an important task is to quickly restore the tourist flow. So, this year it is planned to attract 1.7 million foreign and 7.5 million local tourists to Uzbekistan, as well as increase the provision of services in this area to $370 million.
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