Published on Friday17thNovember2017

EIF and SBCI triple new financing for Irish SMEs to €330 million

20171117 EIF SBCI

Pictured are EIB Vice President for Ireland, Andrew McDowell, Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald and SBCI CEO Nick Ashmore.

The European Investment Fund and the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland have tripled their finance for Irish SMEs under the COSME programme in Ireland with a new increase to €330 million.

Today’s deal means that from 2018, in total, an expected 10,000 companies in all sectors across Ireland will have access to COSME support. The additional €230 million was agreed to meet the demand for new financing requests from Irish companies, after 3,500 SMEs primarily in the agri-sector, fully utilised the EUR 100 million financing supported by the COSME EFSI counter-guarantee agreement signed last year. The loans backed by the European Commission’s COSME programme allowed SBCI to launch a new 3 year risk-sharing product last year which was fully utilised within 6 months.

Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald said:

I welcome this announcement and I look forward to working with the EIB Group on further significant supports for Irish businesses. In addition to the Brexit Loan Scheme which I recently announced, I am also working with the EIB and the SBCI on the development of a Brexit Investment Loan Guarantee Scheme.