Dumitru Nancu: "We are waiting for the budget rectification for the continuation of the IMM Invest Plus program"

The IMM Invest Plus program is waiting for the budget rectification that will take place in September in order to be able to continue granting guarantees to small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who want to obtain credit from the banking system to make investments, Dumitru Nancu said yesterday for DC News , the general director of the National Credit Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium Enterprises (FNGCIMM).

"The IMM Invest program, this year, unfortunately, we had a ceiling of 50% of the budget execution from 2022. Practically, 6.3 billion lei were allocated as a guarantee ceiling and the budget was exhausted as early as May 2023. There were allocated 6.3 billion, the financing was money infused by financial-banking institutions of 7 billion and a number of 7336 small and medium enterprises benefited from the support of IMM Invest 2023.

We are now waiting for the budget rectification, which represents a positive rectification from our point of view, in the sense that we have informed the European Commission and it can be supplemented by 20%, i.e. to the 20 billion lei that were already the guarantee ceiling in the entire IMM Invest program for 3 years, we obtained a waiver of another 5 billion lei from the guarantee ceiling. Let's hope that upon rectification, at the beginning of September, we can receive this guarantee ceiling of 5 billion lei, which is still not enough for the demands of the business environment", said Dumitru Nancu.

The general director of the FNGCIMM specified that, in addition to IMM Invest, from 2020 until now, the National Guarantee Fund has financed 75,000 SMEs. The value of the guarantees granted by the Romanian state was 43 billion lei, and the private money, money of the 23 financial-banking institutions with which the Fund has a guarantee agreement, amounts to 11 billion euros, approximately 55 billion lei.

""As a multiplier effect in the economy, during this 4-year period, one leu guaranteed by the Romanian state returned 12 lei to the state budget. Basically, we have a multiplier effect, a leverage, of 12 compared to our risk policy, where the multiplier effect of the guarantee is somewhere around 6, so one state-guaranteed lei brings 6 lei to the state budget. Now it is clear that IMM Invest is the only program that was accessed by 10% of the business environment in Romania and is the most important financial instrument for the business environment", said Dumitru Nancu.

He showed that the extension of the IMM Invest program for the year 2024 was obtained from the European Commission and that the minimum state aid threshold that a small or medium-sized enterprise can benefit from in 3 fiscal years was increased from 200,000 euros to 300,000 euros.