"What I am most grateful for is having kept all my staff during the crisis," says Costa Rican beneficiary of CABEI's MSME Support Facility

San Jose, June 30th, 2022.- Flor Franco, in addition to being the owner of the Leño y Carbón restaurant, is one of the 817 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that have benefited in Costa Rica through the Central American Bank for Economic Integration's (CABEI) Financial Sector Support Facility for MSME Financing.

Their business is made up of 24 workers who kept their jobs during the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and who, in turn, are part of the 4,410 jobs protected in the country through this innovative tool made available to MSMEs by intermediary financial institutions.

"CABEI highlights the importance of the sector within the regional economy and, in turn, supports them in moving forward and improving their businesses with soft loans. We are very pleased to know that we were among the first to reach out to them in times of crisis and that, two years after the implementation of our Emergency Program, more than 76,000 jobs have been protected in the region," said CABEI Executive President Dr. Dante Mossi.

In the period from April 2020 to April 2022, CABEI disbursed more than US$56 million in loans in Costa Rica through commercial banks and savings and credit cooperatives, with the largest number of requests coming from small businesses (453), followed by microenterprises (325) and medium-sized enterprises (39).

"If CABEI had not been involved, I don't think we would have made it. We are no longer afraid, we are self-confident and we know that we are going to survive no matter what," concluded Mrs. Franco.

According to data from the Regional Center for the Promotion of MSMEs (CENPROMYPE), 1.6 million companies operating in the Central American region are MSMEs, while in Costa Rica there are more than 454,000 enterprises, according to the most recent report from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC).