Microinvest and EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy support local businesses in overcoming challenges of COVID-19 crisis

The biggest challenge of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, has had a significant impact on Moldova’s economy and business environment; particularly micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises are still feeling its consequences. In order to support local businesses, Microinvest in partnership with the EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy, is launching a series of webinars to enhance the knowledge of entrepreneurs in several significant business management areas, such as budgeting, reporting, sales, and human resources.

Thus, starting in February and continuing for four consecutive months, Microinvest clients will be able to participate in webinars conducted by international trainers from the School of Business Communications. The monthly topics will include:

• Excel for business. Operations in Excel and Google Sheets
• How to “plug” the holes in your budget
• “How can I help you?” and 15 other common mistakes that reduce sales
• Leadership and motivation, according to the international methodology Strength Deployment Inventory

The main goal of the webinars is to equip entrepreneurs to effectively respond to these economically turbulent times, by providing them with technical and soft skills that increase resilience and enable them to sustain their operations.

“We are always close to our clients, and especially in these difficult times, it is more important than ever to meet their needs. For the trust they gave us when they chose Microinvest as financial partner, we want to offer them, besides financial support on favourable terms, business advisory services to help them overcome the challenges of the pandemic. Through this initiative, we aim to support local businesses, facilitate their access to information, and contribute to improving the technical and managerial skills of entrepreneurs”, says Dumitru Svinarenco, Executive Director of Microinvest.

Markus Aschendorf, Chairperson of the EFSE Development Facility, which runs the Entrepreneurship Academy, added, “Access to responsible finance is an important part of empowering entrepreneurs to overcome the current economic turbulence. But that is not all. Navigating a business through times of crisis also requires planning, pivoting, financial savvy, and knowing where to find resources and how to apply them. The EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy specialises in providing local businesses with this kind of valuable education, and we are pleased to join forces with Microinvest, an important partner of micro, small, and medium enterprises, in fuelling this key business segment with the skills to succeed.”

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Microinvest is a non-bank lending organization, with foreign capital, which has been operating in the Republic of Moldova since 2003. According to the National Commission for Financial Markets, among the non-bank lending organizations in the country, Microinvest is the organization with the largest credit portfolio. The company offers flexible financing for individuals and small businesses, on favorable terms and conditions.

The EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy is an initiative of the Development Facility of the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE DF) that specifically focuses on providing entrepreneurs with the resources, training, opportunities for financial backing, and other means necessary to turn good ideas into successful enterprises. Created in 2006, the EFSE DF deploys targeted technical assistance to maximise the impact and extent of the fund’s development finance mandate.

For more information on the EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy, please visit:

www.efse.lu/entrepreneurshipacademy