ProCredit Bank Romania had granted green loans for the SME sector since 2014. The total green loans portfolio of the German bank in Romania is currently of approximately 50 million euro, in comparison with 28.2 million euro in December 2017.
Mariana Dimitrova Petkova, Deputy General Manager ProCredit Bank Romania stated: “There is an increasing tendency within SMEs to focus on the energy efficiency. ProCredit Bank is actively targeting SMEs’ potential through its green loans’ portfolio. Meanwhile, we offer an example to our clients, through the energy efficiency and a reduction in our internal resources consumption, policies that we adopted in Romania’s headquarter and all our branches”.
The energy consumption efficiency measures contribute at a macroeconomic level to the environmental protection for a sustainable economy, while offering clients an increased level of competitivity, profitability and quality of the companies, an important index for a medium or small company. ProCredit Bank Romania currently has signed partnerships with European Bank of Investments and European Investments Fund, to facilitate SMEs access to funding, with benefits such as reducing the guarantee’s value and lower interest rates.
The InnovFin programme, the SME Initiative, and the Co-financing programme for SME – Competitiveness Operational Programme – are the main programmes to finance green loans. From a total loan portfolio of 168.5 million-euro which ProCredit Bank can offer within these partnerships, more than 100 million euro have already been granted to SMEs.
Through the partnership signed in 2016 with the European Investments Fund for the InnovFin programme, the bank granted loans of more than 56 million euro. The share of the granted green loans reached 82% this year through this programme, compared to 48% in September 2017.
ProCredit Bank is a digital bank which authentically supports the responsible businesses. An environmental management system is implemented within the bank, which concerns both the adoption of internal measures that lead to an efficient consumption of the used resources, as well as a series of initiatives on the lending activity meant to encourage the projects with a low impact on the environment.
The bank is constantly investing in environment protection and ensuring efficiency with regards to resource consumption. Last year, the ProCredit Bank Romania succeeded in reducing the carbon footprint by 22% through activities including: choosing LED lighting systems and renewing the heating and ventilation systems, carefully monitoring the paper consumption and encouraging the recycle and waste reduction in all the branches. This year, the bank replaced 50% of the total car fleet with electric cars within a programme of upgrading the fleet with eco cars.
In addition, the bank applies an environmental risk management policy in its lending activity, which involves an in-depth analysis of all economic activities that may involve environmental risks, as well as the rejection of loan applications from companies involved in activities that are considered dangerous for the environment and are included on the bank's exclusion list. The attention paid to the credit approval process is meant to increase the awareness of the clients in terms of protecting the environment and society.
These data were presented by ProCredit Bank during a national round table, whose purpose was to find the funding resources for the energy efficiency programmes from Romania, event organised by the EASME. This meeting is a part of a series of forums for investments in energy efficiency sector supported by the European Commission.
