5-5-12 CABEI awards Guatemalan producers for Preserving the country’s biodiversity
More than 500 producers benefit from the financial support of Genesis Empresarial and CABEI’s Project CAMBio.
This week the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), through its Central American Markets for Biodiversity (CAMBio) Project, awarded prizes to small and medium enterprises in Guatemala for their efforts on behalf of biodiversity.
The Bio-Award consists of a 20% cash reimbursement of the capital of a loan provided by an Intermediary Financial Institution (IFI). Of this amount 70% is given to the micro or small business owner, and the remaining 30% is given to the IFI.
The prizes in Guatemala were presented by the Genesis Empresarial Technological Foundation, a non-profit private development organization, whose objective is to support and promote the socioeconomic development of business owners of biodiversity-friendly micro and small enterprises and of the Guatemalan population in urban and rural areas.
The award ceremonies were held at the Town Halls of the El Estor Municipality, Department of Izabal, and at the Coban Municipality, Department of Alta Verapaz, and were presided over by Yuri Zenteno Linares, Regional Coordinator of Project CAMBio and Carlos Herrera, General Manager of Genesis Empresarial.
Mr. Zenteno Linares declared, “We have found a strategic biodiversity-friendly partner in Genesis Empresarial that helps us to remove financial obstacles in order to foster suitable conditions for biodiversity-friendly investment. We hope that this prize will be an incentive for all Guatemalan entrepreneurs who wish to incorporate added value into their businesses, thereby supporting biodiversity preservation.”
Through Project CAMBio, Genesis Empresarial has approved loans in productive sectors including cardamom, coffee and cacao agroforestry. In Guatemala, more than 4,000 loans have been approved for over US$3.1 million to finance biodiversity-friendly MSME projects involved in soil conservancy, solid waste reuse for the production of organic compost and protection of the forest canopy and water resources.
Project CAMBio has also worked with other institutions in Guatemala, such as the “Help Us and We’ll Help You Association” (AYNLA1), the Integral Rural Development Association (ASDIR2) and the Association for the Integral Development of the Lake Atitlán Watershed (ADICLA3), all of which have been awarded with the Bio-Prize.
The Project also includes other credit programs and services that provide financing and are part of the incentives offered to MSMEs. As a result of these incentives provided with non-reimbursable resources from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Project CAMBio has channeled more than US$150,000 to strengthen the technical capacity of biodiversity-friendly MSMEs.
Project CAMBio is a development project whose objective is to remove obstacles for financial institutions in order to foster suitable conditions for biodiversity-friendly investment in the Central American countries. The Project is financed by the Global Environment Fund (GEF), administered by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and executed by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI).
