Photo Credits: IFAD/Paolo Marchetti
USAID Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities (AGRO) Activity implemented by Chemonics, and the AgroApp financial platform help Ukrainian agricultural small and medium enterprises (SMEs) gain access to finance, inputs, equipment, and services necessary for farming and ensuring food security during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
To date, 90 SMEs have received financing by using AgroApp, totaling about 400 million UAH through the Ukrainian government’s “Affordable Loans at 5-7-9%” program with state loan portfolio guarantees launched in response to the war. The AgroApp platform is easy to use: it automatically generates an agricultural producer’s loan application, and banks receive an application ready for financing almost immediately and can make a preliminary decision on granting a loan in a few hours.
“Through this platform, we were able to raise financing to purchase diesel fuel and seeds. The next day after submitting the application through AgroApp, Ukrgazbank called us back. We worried that the loan would not be issued because of the war. Instead, we received great support from AgroApp and the Ukrgasbank employees, filled out all the necessary documents, and received the money very quickly,” says Olha and Serhiy, founders of #agro-enterprise Olsma-Bud, LLC in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
This article was originally authored by Chemonics International.
