Measures

What is the Central Guarantee Fund?

The Central Guarantee Fund is a means for micro, small and medium enterprises to gain access to bank financing exclusively for their business investments and liquidity and is made available by the Italian State.

The Central Guarantee Fund is managed byMediocredito Centrale S.p.A (MCC), which operates by following the directives of the Ministry of Economic Development.

What is the NOP reserve of the Guarantee Fund?

With regard to the Central Government Fund for SMEs, the Ministry of Economic Development has activated anNOP for Research and Competitiveness ERDF 2007-2013reserve, which has been allocated€150 millionto be used by 31 December, 2015. Financing of € 800 million can be guaranteed through the reserve.

NOP beneficiaries

Access to the NOP reserve of the Fund is available to economically and financially viable SMEs that have their business units in one of the regions of the Convergence Objective (Calabria, Campania, Puglia and Sicily).

Permitted financial operations

With regard to the NOP reserve of the Central Guarantee Fund, the following operations are permitted (under the condition that the operations are directly oriented towards entrepreneurial activities):

• Financing for investments;
• Financing for the replenishment of working capital.

Minimal coverage ratio and maximum guaranteed amount

The maximum guaranteed coverage is equal to 80% of the financing.

The maximum guaranteed amount is € 2.5 million.

Access procedure

In order to gain access to the guarantees of the NOP reserve, beneficiary enterprises must be assessed as economically and financially viable. Enterprises wishing to gain access to finance secured by the NOP reserve of the Central Guarantee Fund may follow one of the two following procedures:

• a) Request the guarantee and then seek financing. In this event the enterprise refers directly to the managing body. In the event of a positive outcome the managing body acknowledges the requested guarantee which may then be used by the beneficiary enterprise to gain access to financing from a bank or other admissible financial intermediaries. Access to the guarantee is completed when the financing body confirms that the requester has the necessary requisites to access the Guarantee Fund

• b) Request financing and then obtain the guarantee. In this event the enterprise begins by referring to a bank or other admissible financial intermediaries to obtain financing. Should the assessment procedure lead to a successful outcome for the provision of financing, the financing body has the responsibility to ask the managing body to provide the guarantee from the Fund.

In both events, the requesting enterprise must present, in addition to the necessary documentation for preliminary bank checks (e.g. budgets, Chamber of Commerce extracts etc.), evidence of compliance with the requirements of current legislation for access to the Fund (compliance with tax obligations, current planning and building regulations, labour law, workplace health and safety legislation and environmental regulations. Moreover the requesting enterprise must not have been subject to the total termination of the incentives provided by the Ministry of Economic Development during the three-year period prior to the request to access the Fund and the requesting enterprise must not have been required to return the incentives provided by the Ministry of Economic Development following an authorisation for recovery).

Timing

Procedures for requesting and obtaining the guarantee are particularly swift: average response times are within 30 working days.

Fees

Enterprises accessing theNOP for Research and Competitiveness 2007-2013reserve are not required to pay any fee to the Fund.