EBRD is the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It is supported by the European Central Bank. Its ownership is split between the European Union, the European Investment Bank and 75 countries across the world (including the UK and the USA, both of which have invested a symbolic amount of €3 billion. The HQ is in London, UK.
This is a positive response to the temporary influx of young Albanians who were arriving in UK in small boats a couple of years ago. Hardly any of them qualified for political asylum so it was totally a criminal exploitation of ill-informed young men (mostly) who could have reached UK by bus and ferry for a small fraction of what they must have paid the “people smugglers”.
This provision of affordable credit to small Albanian businesses and start-ups is the right way to help young people set up in business and the right way to helping small and medium businesses expand. It is just a pity though that UK did not put up any of the loan capital.
MSME stands for “Micro-, Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises”.