The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has announced that it will provide USD 46 million in soft loans for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) suffering from the COVID-19 economic fallout. The money adds to a growing bloc of foreign assistance and loans that will fund the government’s wide-ranging COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan (CERP).

The funding will come from an existing program for SMEs that JICA has operated since 2018. Many of the tax breaks, soft loan schemes and other assistance measures provided by CERP apply to SMEs, regardless of whether or not they are in the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. The government has already set aside MMK 100 billion of its own fund to support SMEs. Other hard-hit industries include logistics, exports and seafood. Within the latter, many small time fishermen have been forced to sell their boats and medium-scale seafood exporters have found themselves stuck with rotting merchandise, unable to carry it across Myanmar’s land borders. On the tourism side, JICA’s announcement follows a survey conducted by the Luxembourg Agency for Development Cooperation showing that more than 80 percent of SMEs in the tourism sector have sustained severe damage.

The new JICA funding will join an additional loan from Japan of 30 billion yen (around USD 275 million), which parliament approved last week. An additional loan of USD 700 million from the International Monetary Fund has put the total value of foreign CERP loans at more than USD 2.5 billion.