The Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private sector (ICD) and OJSC Agroinvestbank of the Republic of Tajikistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation to consider extension of a Line of Financing facility to OJSC Agroinvestbank as part of the country program allocation of $25 million for the Republic of Tajikistan. The Line of Financing facility will be extended by OJSC Agroinvestbank to the SMEs sector to projects in industrial, communication, technology, health, construction and agricultural sectors. Khaled Al Aboodi, CEO and General Manager of ICD, said: "The small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have a crucial role to play in a country's growth and development, and ICD has big plans for them. This is an important sector in all the member countries, including the higher income ones. ICD is now focusing on this sector by extending lines of finance to local banks in addition to the establishment of ASR Leasing Company in Tajikistan — a company specialized to provide Shariah-compliant leasing products to the SME sector." Previously ICD extended a total of $11.5 million Line of Financing facility for the development of Small and Medium Enterprises in Tajikistan which demonstrates ICD's firm commitment to develop the private sector in its member countries. The chairman of OJSC Agroinvestbank said: "The close and mutual fruitful cooperation between Agroinvestbank and ICD positively affects the development of the economy of the Republic of Tajikistan through financing SMEs in key sectors such as agricultural, industry, construction and etc. The Islamic banking products have a huge potential to meet the increasing demand for long term financing of SME in Tajikistan. In this regard, the signing of present MoU is a step toward strengthening and deepening our further collaboration in context of development of the economy of the Republic of Tajikistan and enabling SMEs access to finance."
