The President of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association – EMEA , Prof. Rym Ayadi, participated at the 8th Central Bank COVID-19 recovery call: “Making the Arab financial inclusion more resilient Post COVID-19”. The event was hosted by the Arab Monetary Fund and organized by a digital team from both AMF and GIZ on 16 March 2021.
Prof. Ayadi participated in the session “Enhancing risk-sharing instruments that benefits MSMEs in the Arab region: is a regional counter-guarantee mechanism a viable solution?” which discussed the importance of risk mitigation tools and counter guarantee implementation in Europe, as well as the opportunity and feasibility of creating such mechanisms for the Arab region, especially in the context of the post-COVID-19 economic recovery marked by an increased risk exposure.
At her intervention Prof. Ayadi highlighted the importance of the counter guarantee schemes as a risk mitigator instrument that will promote additionality and if well designed and regulated will enhance access to finance to MSMES; however, she emphasised to carefully assess the status of the ecosystem of the credit guarantee schemes in the South Mediterranean before embarking in the set up of national or regional counter guarantee schemes with or without support from the international/regional development partners.
The Euro-Mediterranean Guarantee Network (EMGN) seeks to alleviate the region’s structural constraints for MSMEs to access to finance by gathering guarantee schemes active in the countries of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. It is promoted by the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association – EMEA, the European Institute of the Mediterranean – IEMed, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit – GIZ. EMEA is the coordinator of the research and development pillar of the Network.
