Background

By facilitating investment into this sector, the Project will stimulate economic growth and sustainability among SMEs, thus creating and preserving jobs and accelerating economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.  The Project will also help to fulfill Kazakhstan’s national strategic goals for decreasing energy intensity of the GDP.

Toward these goals, the Project will create and pilot the loan guarantee scheme, conduct supporting activity in training and monitoring, and scale up the loan guarantee fund on the basis of initial results.  Eligible businesses will include providers of energy-saving services and equipment; energy end-users seeking to upgrade efficiency of facilities and energy systems; and intermediaries (micro-finance organizations, leasing companies, factoring companies) that finance eligible businesses or projects mentioned above.

The immediate intended outcome of this Project is the mobilization of loans for SME banks for energy efficiency activities.

Project components

The Project consists of five components, four of which are centred around the loan guarantee scheme.  Each component has its respective set of planned activities and outputs.

Component 1. Assessment of current and potential markets as well as investment needs among SMEs working on energy efficiency

Component 2. Designing the pilot loan guarantee system

Component 3. Piloting the system for supporting investments into energy efficiency projects, review of lessons learned on its performance with subsequent transformation of the system into a sustainable national structure

Component 4. Strengthening capacity of stakeholders (banks, the private sector, specialised institutions etc.) to ensure sustainability of the support system and for pipeline development

Component 4. Project management

Implementing Partner:  Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development

Start Date: 27 August 2021 

End Date:  31 December 2026            

The goal of the project

The Project aims to advance energy efficiency of buildings, infrastructure, and other facilities in Kazakhstan by attracting investment from private investors, banks and international financial institutions via the design, piloting, and development of a partial guarantee scheme supporting bank loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have limited access to credit due to their lack of suitable collateral.