He Undersecretary of Small and Medium Enterprises of the Nation, Tomás Canosa, He assured this Monday that, despite the difficulties, consumption and activity continue to grow and SMEs accompany them with investment. “SMEs have the will to grow and modernize their production to be more competitive, and we accompany them with a multiplicity of tools”, he affirmed.
Likewise, he highlighted the scope of the Crédito Argentino (CreAR) program and revealed that 65% of the companies that participated in it increased their workforce and 20% exported.
The graduate in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and a master’s degree in International Economics and Economic Development from the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin highlighted, in an interview with Télam, that “the investment rate is 17.7% of GDP, the highest in the last 14 years“.
SMEs: the use of installed capacity grows
Likewise, the official informed that, in the Mipyme Registry, there are almost 1.7 million companies currently registered and estimated that the use of installed capacity in the sector is at 68.9%, one of the highest in recent years. eight years and 15% above pre-pandemic levels.
Between The sectors with the highest growth, Canosa unleashed that, in the last year, they have been automotive and aluminum, and, in recent months, clothing and footwear, metal casting, steel industry and machinery and equipment manufacturing.
While some of those that have an irregular yield are milling and oilseeds -due to the obvious consequence of the drought-, in addition to food, chemicals and wood, paper, publishing and printing.
The CreAr program: SME credit
Regarding the active policies that the Government carries out to continue supporting the activity in SMEs, Canosa highlighted financing tools, such as CreAr, that allows access to credits and guarantees for productive investments with rate bonuses of up to 40 percentage points, or programs such as Potencia Pymex, which provides non-reimbursable contributions for strategic investments for exporting MSMEs.
“In addition we launched the initiative for the Digital Transformation of Argentine Mipymes with which we provide training, human capital training and financing to companies that want to modernize and transform their production processes,” he added. And he listed, finally, the Program for Strengthening Institutional Capacities, specifically aimed at intermediate institutions that interact with SMEs.
Canosa explained that the CreAr program has already reached one billion pesos and offers guarantees through Fogar to facilitate access. “Of the trillion pesos of CreAr, $500,000 million are assigned to grant guarantees and, so that they reach the entire country, we work with the provincial funds grouped in the Federal Network of Public Guarantee Funds of Argentina (FONRED), made up of seven provincial funds, belonging to La Pampa, Entre Ríos, Chaco, La Rioja, San Juan, Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego”, he said.
The initiative offers different alternatives for each type of project, from investments for a new production line, to an export project or other strategic ones to substitute imports. “The spirit of the program was that regardless of the size of the company that wants to invest, it has a tool from the Secretariat to be able to carry out that project”emphasized the official.
Source: Ambito
