The government intends to inject credit into micro and small companies in 2022, special advisor to the Economy Ministry Guilherme Afif Domingos told Valor. He expects volumes to continue growing. From April 2020 until now, R$146.9 billion have been released, according to data from Portal do Empreendedor, a gateway to small independent businesses.
“It will be the time and the turn of the guarantee funds”, he said. Credit expansion will be supported by these instruments, which serve to cover banks’ losses in the event of default.
According to Mr. Afif, the Brazilian National Bank of Social Development (BNDES) will specialize in the management of specific guarantee funds for certain types of companies – credit to startups, for example.
In addition, there are plans to make permanent the resources of the Guarantee Funds of Operations (FGO), which in the last two years covered losses on loans from the Program of Support to Micro and Small Businesses (Pronampe), and from the Investment Guarantee Fund (FGI), which did the same in relation to Emergency Program for Credit Access (Peac).
These two funds received contributions in 2020 and 2021, as part of measures to fight the pandemic, but now they need to return the money to the Treasury. However, the maintenance of resources in the FGO and FGI is discussed, since Pronampe was converted from an emergency program into a permanent policy and there are plans to extend the Peac Maquininhas, the receivable guarantee modality.
The bill 3.188/21, authored by Senator Jorginho Mello (Liberal Party, PL of Santa Catarina state), under analysis in the Senate, goes in that direction. The proposal still needs to go through the Chamber of Deputies.
According to Mr. Afif, the FGO can be replenished with the funds that return from operations carried out in the last two years.
There are doubts in the technical area, for example, about how this resource should be treated in relation to the spending cap.
The continuity of the FGO is necessary to guarantee the expansion of credit for micro and small companies in 2022, said the president of the Brazilian Development Association (ABDE), Jeanette Lontra. The organization brings together development institutions, from BNDES to regional development agencies and credit cooperatives.
“It is in these countercyclical periods that the national development system shows its importance,” said Ms. Lontra. The amount contracted by micro and small companies in these institutions grew 118% during the pandemic, she said. The national development system made R$62.5 billion available to Pronampe.
According to Mr. Afif, guarantee funds make credit available to micro and small companies because they circumvent a problem that this public faces: lack of guarantees to be offered to financial institutions. It was based on this diagnosis that he, at the head of Sebrae (small-business support service), created the Guarantee Fund for Micro and Small Businesses (Fampe), 25 years ago. The formula proved to be right during the pandemic, with the performance of FGO and FGI.
Mr. Afif smiled when asked how much the hike in basic interest rates would derail plans to strengthen credit. “Microentrepreneurs have always worked with high interest rates,” he said. The creation of guarantee funds works in the opposite direction, that of reducing the cost of operations. “The spread goes down because the risk is lower.”
Source: Valor International