11/18/2008 16h42
Government wants to facilitate credit to small companies
Folha de S.Paulo 11/18/2008
The government wants to facilitate the granting of loans to micro- and small-sized companies that render services or provide goods to the Federal Government. The idea is to allow that the money that these companies have to receive from the public sector can be offered to the banks as collateral to new financings. According to the Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo, the measure is being studied together with the Treasury Ministry and should be taken until the end of the year. For the minister, the measure is justifiable because micro- and small-sized companies are those which have been having more difficulties to get credit in the market. "That was so before the crisis, and now it is worse. "Bernardo avoided talking about the impact that the change can have. According to him, last year the micro- and small-sized companies closed contracts in the amount of R$ 9 billion (US$ 4.1 billion) with the Federal Government. The use of the payments to be received from the Federal Government as collateral to bank loans would serve to help the companies that, many times, need to wait for a long time between the delivery of a product or the rendering of a service to the government and the release of the corresponding money by the National Treasury. Bernardo said that, in cases of contracts involving higher values, this term can be more than 30 days. For this guarantee to be offered to the banks, however, it is necessary that a government's rule allows that the credits to be received from the Treasury can be transformed into certificates that will have value in the market, and thus they can be accepted by financial institutions. This possibility is already foreseen in the law called General Law of the Micro- and Small-sized Companies, which was passed last year but depends on being regulated to become effective.
