AKIPRESS.COM - A new flour mill will be built in the south of the Kyrgyz Republic thanks to a four-year loan of US$ 4 million being provided jointly by the EBRD and the Kyrgyz Investment and Credit Bank (KICB) to Elnur Dan LLC, a private firm established in 2004, which is currently the country’s third largest flour producer and a long-standing client of KICB.

Elnur Dan’s existing mill on the outskirts of the capital, Bishkek, produces 38,000 tonnes of flour annually and 4,000 tonnes of pasta. The new mill’s equipment is being imported from Turkey and will be built in the country’s most densely populated region, Jalalabad, where 1.1 million people live, said the Bank.

At present, the south of the Kyrgyz Republic depends partly on flour supplies from the north of the country. These have to be transported by road, which raises costs for the local population. Elnur Dan’s new mill in the south of the Kyrgyz Republic will have the capacity to produce up to 170 tonnes of flour a day. By comparison, the capacity of the mill in Bishkek is 225 tonnes of flour a day.

The loan to Elnur Dan is being made under a special financing facility through which the EBRD and its partner banks can lend together to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The joint EBRD-EU SME Finance Facility for Central Asia was created in 2012 to support direct lending to SMEs and indirect financing of SMEs via local banks in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Elnur Dan is one of around 20 projects in Central Asia financed under the joint EBRD-EU programme, to which the European Union’s IFCA has provided €11 million of funds for credit enhancement support and technical assistance.

To date, the EBRD has invested over €510 million in 117 projects in the Kyrgyz Republic.