UDI MPs Alvaro Carter and Joaquín Lavín León announced that they will send trades to have concrete data on both banking and SMEs “so that they can cross them” in front of the series of claims that are being generated by the slowness and rejection in the delivery of Covid Fogape credits.
Carter said that “I am powerfully struck by the series of obstacles that banks are placing on SMEs to obtain Covid Fogape credits which is an instance to help those who are struggling. The point is that it’s not being handled with the original idea of handing over a state guarantee to the company to support such debts in these times of emergency.”
“The Covid Fogape credit seeks to support SMEs and not sink them or drown them by making them wait forever for a response that is often no. They create expectations and are not looking at with a national perspective, because the reality of each region is different, but in a very centralist way,” Deputy Carter added.
“Among the problems that some SME owners have told us are too long response periods, different requirements than those covered by regulations or interest collections that do not correspond are some of the problems that people encounter when applying for loans to the bank through the Small Entrepreneur Guarantee Fund , a benefit that is aimed at all companies that do not have annual sales of more than 1 million UF,” explained Mr Lavín who is a member of the Economics Commission.
“In addition, the spirit of the law would be violated because sales of the last 18 months are being taken and the reality is that it must be considered between September 2018 and October 2019, prior to the social outburst. Obviously if an SME is asked when they will start having cash flow, unless they have a machine to know about the future, they won’t know because the end of this crisis associated with Covid does not go through them,” said Alvaro Carter.
Joaquín Lavín further stated that “another of the criticisms points to the fact that some banks are also not helping to achieve the credit, noting that they do not meet the requirements so that the instant of the minute they are offered a conventional one, with a very high rate, with other conditions and that at the end of the day it does not meet the goal of going to the aid of SMEs but ends up drowning them even more”.
“That is why I am going to ask the Economics Commission to give the Association of Banks, the Sbif and the Asech to provide us with concrete data on the delivery of Fogape credits to SMEs with the idea of crossing all the information and to know for sure whether it is being fully fulfilled for the purpose that this help is intended to go to the rescue of the people who work the most it generates in Chile because on the one hand the banks say that yes but SMEs point out that hopefully 5% of these are reached so it is urgent to know the reality and if so, make the necessary adjustments to make the aid real and not a simple slogan”, said Mr Joaquín Lavín.
