Twista sro

An Italian business broke ground on a project in the Slovak Republic one year after MIGA and Italian development finance agency SIMEST agreed to jointly promote FDI into developing economies. Support for this project is the result of a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the two agencies in November 1999, which put a special emphasis on working with SMEs.

The project involves the expansion and modernization of a company, Twista Sro, for producing and processing synthetic yarn in Humenne, Slovak Republic. MIGA has issued a $713,000 guarantee to MarioBoselli Yarns S.p.A. (MB Yarns), covering the investment against the risks of transfer restriction and expropriation. SIMEST helped fund the project by providing a portion of the equity needed for the capital increase.

Twista allows MB Yarns to draw on the Slovak Republic's relatively skilled labor force and low production costs. Production is expected to increase by about 40 percent to 2,500 tons per year for Twista alone, and may lead to higher production for other Slovak businesses that use the factory. Exports to Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as Italy, are expected to see a significant jump. In addition to creating new jobs, mostly for women, in a region affected by high unemployment, the project will make an extensive contribution to technology transfer by bringing state-of-the art machinery into the country's synthetic textile industry.