Faced with the Covid-19 epidemic, French banking networks have "pre-granted" more than 43 billion state-guaranteed loans to 281,000 companies, according to figures made public by the government on Friday, showing that very small businesses are the main ones beneficiaries of this scheme. This statement, communicated by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, represents the situation of these loans on Thursday evening.
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In a more detailed document, stopped this time on April 15, Bercy reveals that just over 146,000 very small businesses had received a pre-agreement for a state-guaranteed bank loan, or 90% of the total, for a total outstanding of 13 Billions of Euro's. In mid-April, SMEs represented almost 5% of the total, for an outstanding amount of 8.5 billion, and mid-sized companies 0.12% for a little over 2 billion.
Up to 300 billion euros
From the point of view of the sectors of activity, the bulk of the loans had been granted to businesses in the automobile trade and repair, concentrating a quarter of the beneficiaries and nearly a third of the pre-granted amounts. The hotel and catering sector represented 16% of beneficiaries and 10% of the total amount of loans, while the construction sector 12% of beneficiaries and almost 12% of the amount.
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Regarding the geographic distribution of beneficiaries, the Ile-de-France region came first in April in the number of beneficiaries (28,040), followed by the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes (21,104) and New Aquitaine regions (19,492) ). However, the document does not detail the loans refused.
The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron announced on March 16 that this system of loans guaranteed by the State to face the economic consequences of the coronavirus could go up to 300 billion euros.
