The Ivorian SME Credit Guarantee Company (SGPME), which aims to facilitate SMEs’ access to financing and public procurement, operates on two product offerings, namely the Partial Portfolio Guarantee and the Individual Guarantee, supported by several specific counters.
The information was provided by SGPME Director General Joëlle Kouassi during the weekly All-In-One press conference at the Government Information and Communication Center (CICG), in Abidjan-Plateau. The theme was “Financing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).”
“The Partial Portfolio Guarantee (GPP) is a financing line that we make available to our banking and microcredit partners, with eligibility criteria defined in advance. Our financial partners allocate credit to SMEs based on this. In addition, we have the Individual Guarantee, which consists of individualized files that we analyze internally and on which we approve the credit,” explained Joëlle Kouassi.
She indicated that this support system is supported through specific counters such as the Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Movement counter, the Agriculture counter, the Women Entrepreneurs counter, and soon the Transport counter.
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“The MSME counter is intended to be a general counter where we increase our coverage up to 50%, sharing the risk with the banks. We have a counter dedicated to Women Entrepreneurs where we cover up to 80% of the financing risk. We also support, through the Ministry of Agriculture, an agriculture counter within which we will increase our coverage level up to 70%, the objective of this counter being to support all our agricultural value chains, mainly in food crops (corn, rice, etc.),” emphasized the Director General of the SGPME.
She noted that her organization is involved in several projects: “With the Ministry of Transport, we are currently working to open a Transport counter with a view to renewing the entire vehicle fleet in Abidjan (shared vehicles, municipal taxis, gbakas, etc.).”
When we say SMEs within the SGPME, she explained, we are talking about companies that, as of December 31, do not exceed 0 to 1 billion FCFA in turnover. The SGPME also covers mid-sized companies with a lower turnover of up to 3 billion FCFA.
