XacBank secures USD 40 million Proparco facility at COP17

XacBank has secured a USD 40 million long-tenor facility from Proparco, the private-sector arm of France's development agency, Agence Française de Développement (AFD), during the COP17 summit hosted in Ulaanbaatar. The agreement was signed by G. Tsevegjav, the bank's chief executive, and Paulina Gonzalez, Proparco's deputy director for Latin America and Asia.

The facility's significance lies in its structure. Its long maturity is designed to give Mongolian businesses more time to fund capital investment, expand operations and reach longer-dated financing that local funding markets seldom provide.

The proceeds are to be split across three uses. The largest share, 40%, is earmarked for women-led businesses, building on a strategy XacBank has pursued since 2017, when it introduced concessionary loan products for female entrepreneurs, and reinforced in 2023, when it began offering collateral-free loans of up to MNT 50m. A further 30% is allocated to climate change mitigation and eco-friendly production, spanning energy-efficient technologies, green building, renewable energy and low-carbon transport. The remaining 30% is directed at long-term SME financing for firms seeking to scale operations and upgrade equipment.

For XacBank, a long-standing supporter of green finance in Mongolia, the facility reinforces an established area of its lending, aimed at financial inclusion and climate goals. For Proparco, it deepens European development-finance exposure to a frontier banking sector that has drawn a steady flow of multilateral and bilateral credit lines in recent years, with green and gender-linked mandates increasingly common.