26 June 2010
Toronto, Ontario
The Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Finance Challenge is a G-20 initiative to expand business opportunities and create jobs in low-income countries by providing access to financing for their SMEs.
It is accomplishing this by inviting the private sector - financial institutions, private investors, companies and foundations, among others - to develop proposals that will attract private investment for SMEs in low-income countries.
Entries will be judged on how well they enable the public sector to share risk and improve the business investment climate for SMEs, ultimately driving entrepreneurship, job creation and growth. They will be based on the following criteria:
- Innovation: A solution not currently widely applied but that has demonstrated potential for unlocking large-scale private financing.
- Leverage: A solution that maximizes the leverage of increasingly scarce public resources.
- Social and Economic Impact: A solution with a clear, measurable impact on access to financing.
- Sustainability and Soundness: A solution with a demonstrated potential to be scaled up and sustained over the long term as public support is phased out.
Ideas generated from the competition may include new equity or risk capital vehicles that reduce risk for private-sector finance providers, partial credit guarantees, improvements to supplier credit, and trade credit, among others.
All entries much be submitted on-line before August 25 to http://www.changemakers.com/SME-Finance. On October 27, a panel of expert judges will select 12-15 winners, including at least one solution from Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Further details on the SME Finance Challenge can be found online.
Canada is providing $20 million in support of this initiative, which it committed to launching at the G-20 Leaders Summit in Pittsburgh in 2009.
