The Ministry of Industry launches the Industrial Entrepreneurship Support Program for industrial SMEs

The program is part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and is backed by the collaboration agreement signed today with CESGAR and ten of the main credit institutions: Abanca, BBVA, Banco Cooperativo Español, Banco Sabadell, Banco Santander, Bankinter, CaixaBank, Kutxabank, Ibercaja and Unicaja.

This new package of aid, channeled through the Spanish Refinancing Company (CERSA), attached to the Ministry of Industry, and the Reciprocal Guarantee Societies (SGR), is fundamentally aimed at the creation of new industrial establishments and the growth and improvement of the competitiveness of industrial companies -SMEs.

The program will discount the costs, for participating small and medium-sized companies, associated with obtaining long-term financing to finance investments in entrepreneurship and growth. It will be necessary for financing operations granted by credit institutions to have the guarantee of an SGR. It is expected that this new program will benefit, in principle, 1,500 SMEs, although with the available resources it is possible to reach a higher number of companies.

The signing of the new aid program agreement was attended by the Secretary General for Industry and SMEs, Raúl Blanco; the president of the Spanish Confederation of Reciprocal Guarantee Societies (CESGAR), Antonio Couceiro; the president of CERSA and General Director of Industry and SMEs, Galo Gutiérrez, as well as representatives of the main collaborating credit entities.

According to Raúl Blanco, “this new aid package will help to facilitate industrial entrepreneurship and, therefore, to the birth of more new industries in our country”.

For Antonio Couceiro, president of CESGAR, “with this new program, guarantee companies once again show their fundamental role in financing small and medium-sized companies in the most difficult times for them”. Not in vain, “since the pandemic began, and thanks to the CERSA revalidation, the SGRs have granted almost 61,300 guarantees for an amount of 4,400 million euros, helping SMEs and the self-employed to keep their businesses open until they recover their income level and, in many cases, they can grow”, he assured.

For his part, Galo Gutiérrez reiterated the need to launch this new aid package in order to “increase the weight of the industrial sector in the Spanish economy, increase the size of industrial SMEs, promote long-term industrial financing term, as well as mitigating costs for SMEs with less possibility of offering guarantees”.