The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has organised a financing package of $4mn for Tajikistan’s largest private lender Bank Eskhata via its Green Economy Financing Facility (GEFF) to support green financing for households and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) investing in green technology solutions, the EBRD said in a statement.

Eskhata’s loans will cover drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting and storage, sustainable land-management solutions, solar panels and energy-efficient cold-storage facilities for SMEs and households in villages and remote rural areas. Beneficiaries are able to identify climate adaptation technologies through the GEFF Tajikistan-supported Green Technology Selector database.

The funding will be provided by the EBRD and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in three tranches and will be available in both dollars and local currency.

The GEFF in Tajikistan, backed by the EU, the GCF and South Korea, is supporting equal gender access to green finance. 

“The GEFF is part of the EBRD’s recently announced plan to scale up its climate and environmental finance under the Green Economy Transition (GET) approach, according to which the Bank will aim to increase green financing to more than 50 per cent of its annual investment by 2025 while paying particular attention to gender considerations,” the statement said.

To date, the EBRD has invested €749mn via 136 projects in Tajikistan’s economy.