PUBLICACIONES X FORO IBEROAMERICANO DE SISTEMAS DE GARANTIA Y FINANCIAMIENTO PARA LA MIRO Y PYME – VALLADOLID – CASTILLA Y LEON – ESPAÑA

The paper deals with the formulation of concepts and characteristics in depth, which results in an international classification and terminology of guarantee systems/schemes.

Summary: In financial systems, guarantee is a “scarce” good (or a scarce resource), especially the best certified and weighed guarantees, which causes serious difficulties in the access to financing by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (micro and SMEs). In short, this is a contradictory situation: on the one hand, micro and SMEs are important for the employment and wealth creation; and on the other hand, the rules of the financing system discriminate these enterprises in relation to other business and even territorial structures. One solution is found in guarantee systems/schemes. The real diagnosis of the problem of the access to financing by micro and SMEs shows that international rules on call for capital and provisions, established according to the certification and weighting of guarantees, cause competitive inequality to micro and SMEs in financial markets. Taking the real diagnosis of the access to the financing of micro and SMEs as a basis, once the option is adopted either to establish and to implement a public policy of a guarantee system/scheme in a territory or to modify the existing one, the basic decision to be taken is what the most appropriate model of guarantee system/scheme is to be implemented and developed. Because guarantee systems/schemes are not homogeneous and therefore do not have the same quality, effectiveness and importance. An international typology and classification is absolutely necessary, since it is very usual to find merely descriptive evaluations, analyses and classifications of guarantee systems/schemes, which have not been compared to other. These heterogeneous system/scheme assessments are made as if they were homogeneous, just because they share the guarantee activity (as if a bank and a financial entity, or a leasing or a factoring company, or an informal lender were the same thing). This problem is aggravated by the general use of certain names. To facilitate these processes our paper deals with the formulation of concepts and characteristics in depth, which results in an international classification and terminology of guarantee systems/schemes.

Pablo Pombo-Horacio Molina-Jesus Ramirez y Mª José Vázquez de la Fundación ETEA Facultad de CCEE.