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The extension and tightening of the quarantine until July 17 not only caused discouragement in those small and medium-sized companies that will face weeks without invoicing, but also a deep concern about the first maturities of the loan installments that were granted in the framework of official assistance to the private sector to mitigate the economic impact of quarantine. And they were originally operating in August.
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The Central Bank clarified yesterday that subsidized credits for the payment of salaries for small and medium-sized companies, with a rate of 24% and a state guarantee that began to be granted in April, will be included within the extension of maturities of bank debts until September 30th. In other words, the first installments may only be paid from October since the banks will not be allowed to charge punitive interest for the arrears and the unpaid installments must be paid in the months following the end of the loan.
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It is that among the main conditions of the credits at 24% for the payment of salaries is the 3-month grace period, maturing in July in a large number of cases. The scheme announced at the time, then, indicated that for the loans granted in April, it would be only in August, when the worst of the pandemic had passed and the effects of the quarantine had begun to dilute, that companies should begin to return the money. But the sanitary calculations failed. In the context of the greater and more lasting restrictions on the normal functioning of the different activities, this period added another headache for the firms, already with enormous complications to sustain themselves.
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Without specific details regarding the MiPyme line, which reached 161,817 operations with a total disbursement of $ 263,887.4 million, the Central Bank included these loans in the resolution according to which “the unpaid balances of credits granted by financial entities, including those that are updated by UVA, whose installments are due between April 1 and September 30, 2020, will not accrue punitive interest. In addition, it is confirmed that the unpaid installments must be incorporated in the months following the end of the life of the loan, considering the accrual of the compensatory interest rate ”.
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The decision brings significant relief to at least 75,000 companies that accessed these loans in the first three weeks of April, for a total amount of $ 108,000. And it will also allow delaying the delinquency rate of the system, which banks already foresee will have a general jump and which will reach, in the case of assistance financing that also includes loans at 0 rate, a level of 15%. This is because clients will accumulate previous balances with new debts.
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The only debts that were excluded from the extension of maturities until September 30 are credit card financing balances. At the beginning of the pandemic and with the first mandatory isolation measures, the Government had decided that those who had debts on their credit card could choose to postpone the maturities until April 12. Weeks later, a special financing plan was implemented in 9 installments with a 3-month grace period for unpaid balances. That period, in this case, does and unless the Central Bank establishes in the next few days a measure to the contrary that is not currently under discussion, it will operate as defined in that scheme.
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