Are Public Guarantees for Credit to SMEs Efficient? Some International Official Survey

Sébastian SCHICH Administrateur principal, Division des marchés financiers, Direction des affaires financières et des entreprises, OCDE (Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques). Contact : Sebastian.SCHICH@oecd.org.Le présent article s'inspire en partie des résultats de l'enquête OCDE/CE présentée dans les travaux de Schich et al. (2017). Les opinions exprimées et les arguments employés dans cet article ne reflètent pas nécessairement la position officielle de l'OCDE ou des gouvernements de ses États membres.

While small firms are important potential drivers of real economic activity growth, they are considered as lacking access to finance. This situation has motivated policy intervention to facilitate their funding. Policy support for SMEs takes various forms and includes in particular the provision of partial guarantees by publicly supported credit guarantee arrangements for credit extended by banks to SMEs. Policy makers have recognised the need for evaluating the performance of such arrangements, especially as such evaluations can be helpful in changing the design of existing financial guarantee programmes, so as to make them operate more effectively. The results from an OECD/ECsurvey on evaluating publicly supported financial guarantee programmes for SMEs suggest however that there is considerable discrepancy in many countries between actual practises and what might be considered “good practises” in assessing the performance of these arrangements. Many policy makers appear to trust in the net economic benefits generated by such support arrangements for SMEs to such an extent that they do not feel obliged to produce “hard evidence” in support of this view.