Georgia

<p>The &quot;SheTrades - Asian Development Bank: Advancing Women&rsquo;s Economic Empowerment&quot; project aims to enhance the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs in Asian countries.&nbsp;</p><p>The project seeks to foster a more equitable financial environment for women by capacitating selected ADB partner banks with gender financing methodologies and good practices. This entails training the partner banks in the development, implementation, and fortification of gender-lens financing strategies, aiming to better address the financial needs of women-led businesses.</p><p>The intervention will also make existing resources accessible to Asian women, by translating SheTrades Academy online training modules into Bengali, Russian, and Vietnamese. This translation endeavour aims to provide crucial information to Bengali, Vietnamese, and Russian-speaking women entrepreneurs in ADB countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kirgizstan), spanning the spectrum from start-ups to established businesses, fostering the enhancement of their business acumen for improved participation in regional and global value chains.</p><p><br></p>

<p>The Eastern Area Partnership (EaP) Helpdesk will provide economic operators, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), trade and investment support institutions (TISIs) and policy makers in EaP countries with an interactive online platform that offers access to trade information (e.g. tariffs, non-tariff measures, taxes, trade statistics, trade procedures and company data) necessary to do business in the region and with the European Union (EU). An online feedback mechanism will allow companies to report on difficulties they face in international trade. Surveys of trade barriers in each country will enable an increased understanding of the regulatory and procedural obstacles that companies face and help policy makers to identify options to reduce trade costs. Training on the analysis of the information available via the Helpdesk will allow SMEs and TISIs to identify export opportunities and the capacity of institutions to collect and process services data for selected sectors will be strengthened.</p>

<p>The project aims to help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries integrate into global value chains and access new markets with a focus on the European Union (EU). The intervention will assist SMEs in producing value-added goods in accordance with international and EU market requirements; while linking them with buyers from global value chains and markets, in particular within the EU. As part of this process, the assistance will improve sector specific services to SMEs along the selected value chains by strengthening the capacity of local business support organisations (BSOs). The two main project focus sectors are agro-processing, and textile and clothing. &nbsp;</p>