July 2017

APAC / July 2017 7 NEWS , Kazakhstan rep- resents the sixth country listed on the peer-to-peer lender’s platform and the first time a European peer-to-peer lender has expanded to Central Asia. The Kazakh loans have du- ration of one month and will offer investors a return rate of 11% per annum. The loans will be covered by TWINO’s industry leading Buy- Back Guarantee, which protects investors from borrower default risk. The move to Kazakhstan coin- cides with TWINO’s peer-to-peer platform celebrating over €150m worth of loans funded since in- ception in 2015. The platform is listing loans across several Euro- pean countries - including Latvia, Poland, Russia, Georgia, Spain and now Kazakhstan. It has re- turned a total of more than €2.7 million in interest to investors dur- ing this time, averaging a return of around 12%. It has more than 9,000 active investors, [12.5%] from the UK. Its parent company, TWINO Group, which is entirely self-fund- ed to date, has issued more than €440 million of consumer lending since it was founded in 2009. Its consumer lending arm launched operations in Kazakhstan in Au- gust 2016 and, since then, has issued over €2 million of loans. Jevgenijs Kazanins, Peer-to-peer Platform Lead, at TWINO, said: “The expansion to Kazakhstan is a hugely important milestone for us and we’re proud to be the first European P2P platform to expand to Central Asia. “The Kazakh market is rapidly developing consumer lending environment. Our investors will have access to premium yields of around 11%, along with all the protections offered by TWINO, in- cluding our BuyBack Guarantee. “We’re also proud to have cele- brated our €150m funding mile- stone just two years after we started. We’ve generated a signif- icant return for our investors dur- ing this time and we continue to grow quickly across Europe and beyond.” Since it was established in 2009, TWINO has originated over €440m of lending. You can learn more at: www.twino.eu . The Action Plan, to be developed co-re- sponsibly by stake- holders of the global value chain and with the support of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), must set concrete goals, the time peri- od to meet them, and the required funding. This Action Plan must be based on the problems faced by the cof- fee sectors of different regions in the world, namely: low prices and excessive volatility for producers (with larger profits remaining in the other links of the chain), adap- tation to climate change, scarce workforce, reduced generational change and producers’ precari- ous social conditions. Considering the recommenda- tions made in the Forum, the Ac- tion Plan will also be based on a study to be conducted by an inde- pendent body to analyse the be- haviour of coffee prices in the last 40 years, production costs in this same period, and their correlation. The study will analyse if interna- tional coffee prices, both at the New York and London stock ex- changes, reflect the reality of the physical market, and will present alternative solutions to the prob- lems discussed in the Forum. The Final Declaration resolved that a co-responsible commit- ment to implementing the Ac- tion Plan and funding it must be achieved at the highest level with representatives of the industry, donors, international cooperation, multilateral organisations, and national and local governments. For the actions to be developed, a committee will be formed, made up of two representatives of producer associations from Afri- can countries; two from Mexico, Central American and Caribbean countries; two from South Ameri- can countries and two from Asian ones, and at least one represent- ative of the industry in each of the following regions: North America, Europe and Asia. The committee shall submit a pro- gress report in the next meeting of the ICO’s International Cof- fee Council, to be held in March 2018. The next World Coffee Producers Forum will take place in 2019, and the committee will coordinate its venue; aside from the resolutions, Brazil offered its territory to host the next Forum. TWINO Expands to Central Asia and Begins Listing Kazakhstan Loans N “We have just started a new pro- cess in the world coffee sector,” said Roberto Velez, CEO of the Colombian Coffee Growers Fed- eration (FNC, the host organisa- tion). “Today we finished a reflec- tion, assembling ideas, a process of listening each other, but it is only the beginning of what we hope is a new stage.” Velez even raised the possibility that this new way of understand- ing, collaboration and co-respon- sibility between producers and consumers, this new North-South relationship between developed and developing countries, may set the course towards a new global economic history. Among the assumptions that gave rise to these resolutions are critical profitability and even losses for coffee farmers due to low international prices, low pro- ductivity, higher production costs related to climate change and variability, and rising labour costs, including harvesting ones. This lower profitability has result- ed in a significant percentage of coffee producers living in pover- ty or at least with lower quality of life (housing, utilities, education, health, etc.), and lower capacity to reinvest in their farms. Without corrective actions to ad- dress these problems in a coor- dinated way and their financing, the world may face a structural reduced coffee supply, unable to meet the demand, which in turn will create undesirable imbalanc- es in the coffee market that may put at risk sustainability of the global chain. The spirit of the Final Declaration considered the main conclusions and recommendations of the Fo- rum, perfected with an active par- ticipation of delegates in thematic groups organised for their analy- sis and discussion. The Forum was addressed by fig- ures of international stature such as former US president Bill Clin- ton, University Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the ICO Executive Di- rector, José Sette; the presidents of Colombia, Costa Rica and Honduras, agricultural ministers, and representatives of the whole coffee value chain, including pro- ducers. www.cafedecolombia.com TWINO, one of the Europe’s leading peer- to-peer lending platform, on 6th July announces that it has begun listing short term loans via its Kazakhstan originator- allowing its investors to further diversify their investment portfolios.