Investicijų ir verslo garantijos (INVEGA) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) signed a cooperation agreement that will help Lithuania implement risk capital instruments to develop its private equity and venture capital markets. 

The financing programme will be used to implement four risk capital funds via selected financial intermediaries, deploying around €58.8 million of public funding and leveraging additional financial resources. The terms for the implementation of the risk capital funds are to be published shortly for comments by market participants. The instruments will be targeted to facilitate the start-up and business development needs of SMEs, INVEGA announced yesterday. 

Verslo žinios, the main Lithuanian business daily, adds that INVEGA should announce the terms of these instruments by the end of this year, and then, after discussing them with stakeholders, tenders for four fund managers would be launched. 

It is expected that selected funds would start investing somewhere around mid-2017 and 2018, and yet these instruments have been anticipated by the market much earlier.