SFA welcomes minister's meeting with top bankers

The Small Firms Association has welcomed Enterprise and Innovation Minister Batt O'Keeffe's meeting with top bankers to discuss lending to small and medium-sized businesses.

SFA welcomes minister's meeting with top bankers

The Small Firms Association has welcomed Enterprise and Innovation Minister Batt O'Keeffe's meeting with top bankers to discuss lending to small and medium-sized businesses.

SFA director Avine McNally said: "Any action or intervention which will ensure greater access to credit for viable SMEs is welcomed.

With one in five small businesses in Ireland not getting enough credit, we have a very serious problem, with potentially 50,000 small business closures and 160,000 jobs lost as a result."

The SFA Spring Business Sentiment Survey, shows that one-fifth of companies have seen the availability of working capital decrease in the last three months, with 13% indicating that investment finance availability has decreased.

The cost as well as access to finance, is also increasing as a problem for small businesses, with 15% of companies stating that the cost of working capital had increased for them in the last three months and the cost of investment finance having increased for 8% of respondent companies.

The Small Firms Association said it believes that the Mazars III report "further demonstrates that there is now clearly a market failure in the provision of SME lending".

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