BERLIN - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will help businesses in eastern Europe threatened by a lack of available credit, the bank’s head said in an interview to be published on Monday. “After having stabilised to a large degree eastern European banks in difficulty, we are now going to step up our support to firms in difficulty,” bank president Thomas Mirow told German economic daily paper Handelsblatt.
“The aim is to provide extra credit to eastern European businesses,” he added.
Refinancing these businesses would be “the main problem in eastern Europe in the coming two or three years”, he predicted.
The EBRD and the World Bank were among financial institutions who recently raised the alarm about dwindling credit in eastern Europe.
The global economic crisis prompted some financial institutions and foreign banks in eastern Europe and Baltic countries to pull funds out of the region.
“Economic recovery in eastern Europe will be threatened if we do not manage to sufficiently stabilise businesses” hit by the economic crisis, Mirow said.
He predicted it would take the region at least three years to work its way back to levels of growth seen before the downturn.
