The North Africa Enterprise Development (NAED), a regional small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business development facility programme managed by the International Finance Corporation, has convened the first of five planned conferences in Rabat on best practices, international experiences and methods to increase access to finance for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Morocco.
The series of conferences reflect the joint efforts of NAED and the Central Bank of Morocco to improve the local environment for SME lending.
NAED signed a partnership agreement with the central bank in March 2004 to look at the possibility of creating a database for the financial statements of companies, addressing a major barrier to higher bank lending: issues of transparency and the dearth of reliable information about SME creditworthiness.
