The companies under an Erte (temporary employment regulation) or ERE (layoffs) are the ones that have requested financing in the highest percentage. The 62% of companies benefiting suspensions applied for funding employment, compared with 50.8% of those who had not requested such aid to face the consequences of pandemic Covid.
In addition, only 1.1% of the participants in the survey declare that the credit institution has not wanted to grant the financing or they have not accepted the conditions, according to the data provided by the Report on the economic impact of Covid-19 on SMEs in Spain, prepared by the General Council of Economists.
Thus, it is found that only 1.3% of the SMEs that have tried to access financing lines had the application in process , while the rest of the applications have been accepted by credit institutions under the same conditions as in previous years (80.6% of the companies that applied for financing) or in worse conditions (16.9% of those companies).
Access to financing is also analyzed in the Report considering the size of the company, distinguishing between those that are covered by an Erte or ERE and those that are not, depending on the age and sector of activity of the company.
Regarding the age of the company, those that are 10 years old or less are the ones that, in a greater percentage, requested financing from financial institutions. Thus, 58.5% of the young women applied for a loan compared to 55.6% of the mature women.
With regard to size, there are statistically significant differences in the percentage of companies that have tried to access financing lines from credit institutions. Thus, 66.7% of medium-sized companies applied for financing, compared to 47.6% of micro-companies.
47% of micro-enterprises are self-financing compared to 29% of medium-sized ones
The difference is explained because the microenterprise is mainly self-financing. This is stated by 47.0% of them, compared to 29.2% of medium-sized companies that are self-financing. However, when analyzing panel B that reflects the result of the funding request, the size factor does not show statistically significant results. Around 80% of companies of all sizes have obtained financing under the same conditions as in previous years.
Once the loan has been applied for, young companies are more limited in obtaining it. Thus, 4.2% of the young companies did not obtain the requested financing (0.6% of the mature ones), 2.1% of the young companies were accepted for the operation, but the company refused because the conditions tightened ( 0.0% of the mature ones), and for 4.2% of the young companies the applications were still in process (0.8% in the case of the mature ones).
Finally, in terms of the activity sector, there are significant differences in the request for financing. Construction is the sector in which fewer SMEs requested financing from financial institutions. Thus, only 41.4 of the construction companies applied for financing, compared to 56.2% who were self-financed. The opposite occurred in the rest of the sectors analyzed (industry, commerce and services).
No significant differences emerged between the sectors in terms of the outcome of the funding request.
The analysis on access to bank financing is completed with a discussion of the financing conditions: cost and volume of the financing line, commissions and expenses, guarantees and guarantees that must be provided and the term for repayment of the resources.
