• Coris Bank International Côte d’Ivoire receives $34.3 million loan from Proparco to support SMEs

• The financing complements a renewed trade guarantee facility agreed in April 2025

• Partnership with Proparco has expanded across multiple Coris Group subsidiaries since 2021

Coris Bank International Côte d’Ivoire (CBI CI) has secured a senior loan of €30 million, or approximately $34.3 million, from Proparco, a private sector financing institution affiliated with the French Development Agency (AFD). The announcement was made on Monday, June 2, 2025.

This financing aims to bolster the bank's capacity to extend more credit to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Côte d’Ivoire. It complements the Trade Finance guarantee renewed in April 2025 between the two partners, both initiatives intended to ease SMEs' access to finance.

"We aspire to strengthen our partnership with Proparco in the future, especially in the area of international trade, to continue our commitment to African entrepreneurship and to actively contribute to the development of sustainable value chains," said Idrissa Nassa, President of Coris Group.

The partnership between Coris Group and Proparco commenced in 2021 with an initial Trade Finance guarantee given to Coris Bank Burkina Faso. It has since expanded to other subsidiaries of the group, including Senegal, Togo, Benin, and more recently Chad. CBI CI is currently the group's second-largest subsidiary by total balance sheet size, following Burkina Faso.

A survey conducted in 2016 among SMEs in Côte d’Ivoire revealed that 25 percent identified access to financing as the greatest barrier to growth. The estimated financing deficit of these companies stands at CFA1,368.2 billion ($2.4 billion), according to a study by the International Finance Corporation.