Financial Support Schemes for SMEsOct 26, 1998

The Banking Supervisory Authority (BSA) laid out detailed schemes concerning workout of small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) on August 7th after which each bank was directed to identify financing needs, such as new loans, maturity extensions and debt-equity swaps, of both priority support SMEs as well as conditional support SMEs.

As of end-September, financial support schemes for a total of 11,815 SMEs have been approved and these SMEs will be provided financial support in accordance to prescribed terms. Workout plans will be devised for SMEs that are identified as workout targets upon consultation with given SME.

With financial support schemes as well as workout of SMEs being pushed forward on a timely schedule, liquidity and management problems faced by SMEs are expected to be resolved in a speedy manner.

BSA will continue to monitor bank’s implementation of SME support schemes and will induce banks to swiftly devise schemes for those SMEs that are still without support schemes.

STATISTICS

Categorization of SMEs

ㅇ As of end-September, 1998, a total of 22,760 SMEs were categorized into the following 3 types

- Priority support SMEs : 7,370 (decrease of 476 from end-June, 1998)
- Conditional support SMEs : 13,985 (increase of 1,054 from end-June, 1998)
- Others : 1,405 (decrease of 17 from end-June, 1998) 

SME Financial Support Schemes

ㅇ As of end-September, 1998, 12,930 SMEs, that is 60.5% of the total number of priority and conditional support SMEs, expressed desire to receive financial support

- priority support SMEs : 5,477 out of total 7,370 (74.3%)
- conditional support SMEs : 7,453 out of total 13,895 (52.3%)

ㅇ Summary of financing needs submitted by SMEs

- New loans : 7,195 SMEs involving 5.8 trillion won
- Maturity extensions of loans or conversion to medium-long-term (3-5 yrs) loans : 6,190 SMEs involving 8.8 trillion won
- Debt-equity swap : 22 SMEs involving 30 billion won

ㅇ Summary of approved SME financial support schemes ; as of end-September, 1998 among 12,930 SMEs that submitted requests a total of 11,815 SMEs received approvals

- Priority support corporates : 5,246 (95.8%)
- Conditional support corporates : 6,589 (88.1%)

* Please refer to the attached file for details.