From 17 March to 27 April 38,921 applications for guarantees for loans to companies, artisans, self-employed and professionals arrived at the Fund for SMEs . This was announced by Stefano Cappiello Director General of the Banking and Financial System - Legal affairs of the MEF in hearing at the Banks Committee, specifying that the applications "generated an amount of 3.6 billion euros in financing, of which approximately 450 million euros for the 20,835 transactions related to loans up to 25,000 thousand euros , accessible for less than a week on the date of the survey ".
There has been a "surge" in the use of the loan instrument up to 25,000 , Cappiello explained, specifying that there were just 5,000 last week while "yesterday in the update conference call the number had already risen to 30,000 questions. In a few days - he stressed - there was a surge ".
The measures for families and businesses in the covid emergency "are bearing tangible results, although it cannot be denied that there have been malfunctions - Cappiello specified - but it must be borne in mind that the size of the phenomenon is enormous". "This leads us to believe that a certain number of cases of malfunction or anomaly are physiological and should be immediately corrected, but which, if examined in relation to the requests, would appear to be limited in percentages. Without wishing to diminish the importance of 'doing more"' and try to solve each case.
"We will therefore continue to work to contribute to a continuous improvement of the functioning of the measures, and to update this information assets weekly, which will be made available to the public for the purpose of a complete evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of each of the measures. activated, "he continued, stressing that the banking and financial system is" called to an exceptional commitment in operational terms "and that" this additional effort is also grafted onto an organizational situation that is itself under stress from the epidemic, as happens for all productive sectors of goods and services ".
Cappiello then stressed that "the safeguard measures that have been adopted to combat the epidemic have inevitably led to a sharp contraction in economic and production activity. This is leading to a significant erosion of the revenues of households and businesses, on the one hand affecting their ability to cope with past financial commitments and, on the other, introducing the risk that access to new loans will be precluded or made difficult ".