Government scraps 2022 SME loan guarantee programme

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has con­firmed that the gov­ern­ment has scrapped the $500 mil­lion Long-Term Loan Guar­an­tee Scheme for Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es, in­tro­duced in 2022 to help non-en­er­gy sec­tor busi­ness­es ac­cess fi­nanc­ing.

The an­nounce­ment came dur­ing a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ses­sion, fol­low­ing ques­tions from for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who launched the fa­cil­i­ty three years ago. The pro­gramme, man­aged by com­mer­cial banks, had of­fered gov­ern­ment-backed guar­an­tees of up to 80 per cent for loans with a ten-year term and a two-year mora­to­ri­um on re­pay­ments.

Tan­coo said the ini­tia­tive was dis­con­tin­ued af­ter “a sub­stan­tial­ly low up­take” be­tween 2023 and the end of fis­cal 2025. “It was un­der­sub­scribed,” he said, adding that gov­ern­ment would in­stead “reach out to small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es via ini­tia­tives that they are in­clined to ac­cept.”