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The Financial Platform, a facilitator pioneered by USAID’s Macedonia Competitiveness Project, has become a model for bridging the gulf between small companies in growth industries and financing institutions used to lending only to large firms in traditional sectors.
 MCP's Mirjana Makedonska presents new lending instruments to firms exporting and processing fresh fruit and vegetables in in Strumica, southern Macedonia
Since 2008, the Financial Platform has helped 159 small and medium-sized companies successfully obtain $82 million in financing and invest a total of $121 million in their own operations. New facilities and products gave rise to 1,834 new jobs.
The true transformative nature of the Platform, however, lies in the growth of a new profession, financial advisor—and how it is perceived by entrepreneurs. The Platform built the capacity of Macedonia’s fledgling financial advisors: training them, pairing them with companies in need of expansion financing, and partially subsidizing the success fees they’d receive if financing was approved. Eventually, companies shouldered this success fee entirely, having come to value services like business planning and cost-benefit analyses.
As one of its last Financial Platform activities in late 2011 and early 2012, MCP hosted three matchmaking sessions—the last two in cooperation with another USAID/Macedonia project, AgBiz—to introduce leaders in specific industries to financing institutions. Firms in apparel, fresh and processed fruit and vegetable, and confectionary also heard about new lending instruments, such as factoring, the ability to “sell” invoices from buyers to the Macedonia Development Bank in exchange for financing.
CARANA is rolling out the Financial Platform model at its projects in West Africa and Ecuador, and its coordinator, Mirjana Makedonska, presented it to USAID in Georgia last fall.
Published in February 2012
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