Marcellin Zinsou, president of the Credit Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (FGPME), was yesterday at the Plateau the guest of the Association of Professional Journalists of the Economy in his forum “The guest of the floor for leader”. Taking advantage of this communication space, the president of the FGPME, among other things, presented its structure, what it has done, its prospects and especially the problems that the FGPME encounters in the financing of SMEs.
President Marcellin Zinzou, for this year 2022, has promised to support many more SMEs by giving them the possibility of creating jobs. “By the end of 2022, out of the 65,000 formally constituted SMEs, we, the FGPME, are ready to support more than ten (10) thousand SMEs this year. We have the ability to do it, we have the resources to do it,” he said. The president of the FGPME sees in this process of financing SMEs, the creation of jobs in order to solve the thorny problem of unemployment which Côte d’Ivoire is also facing. “Of these ten (10) thousand SMEs, if even a single SME creates a single additional job, that makes us ten (10) thousand jobs (…). Take two (02) jobs for each SME that we are going to support, that makes us twenty (20) thousand jobs. We can’t be more ambitious than that,” he said. But alongside these performances he wants to display, there is a blocking factor. Namely: the processing time of files by the partner banks of the FGPME.
And on this issue, President Marcellin Zinsou is bitter. “In 2021, out of 800 companies, we were able to support 300. The files are in the banks and we were really able to finalize around fifty files. This is where there is a real problem with the banks”, he denounced and asked that the banks speed up the processing of files “I have proposed solutions, in particular imposing on the banks a maximum period of 15 days to give a response to the financing files of SMEs (…) The files of the 300 identified are still in the three (03) banks with which we work (…) It is not possible. At the level of the Guarantee Fund, we respond within five (05) days. A file must not be more than five (05) days with us. We have to give the answer. But when we give the answer, the bank has its time, its lengths. There are banks that can take two (02) or three (03) months before giving an answer. We ourselves have to force the bank (…)”, lamented President Marcellin Zinsou again. For him, this failure of the banks is not likely to support this project. “The government’s efforts to put in place this guarantee mechanism in the end are useless because the banks are taking their time.
And this time taken by the banks becomes a failure factor. We must do everything this year, to work on it with the Bceao so that the banks can reduce their credit study times requested by SMEs,” he announced. The Credit Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (FGPME), as its name suggests, aims to facilitate access to financing for SMEs.
DJE KM
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