SB Corp. is beefing up its lending program to micro, small enterprises (MSMEs) through purchase order (PO) financing.
Robert Bastillo, SB Corp. president and chief executive officer, said it is focusing on this program to give enterprises a steady credit line and be able to fulfill orders from big and reputable companies.
Bastillo said SB Corp. will finance up to 80 percent of the value of a validated PO to ensure the operation of the enterprise.
“This is an aggressive program especially for those companies which are growing fast,” he added.
The program is particularly beneficial to contractors and exporters which are part of the supply chain of big companies.
Bastillo said this is one way of helping enterprises to graduate from micro to small, and small to medium.
He said SB Corp. has successfully graduated 500 small companies to medium, short of the Department of Trade and Industry’s target of 800.
“The number of medium enterprises (in SB Corp.’s list) is not even 5,000. If we add 1,000 every year, we can transform the economy,” Bastillo said.
The numbers do not include borrowers of SB Corp.’s partners which handle half of its funds. These are cooperatives, micro finance institutions and rural banks.
“We have also asked them to track the performance of their borrowers,” Bastillo said.
SB Corp.’s RISE Up multipurpose loan program cumulatively lent to 65,943 direct borrowers a total P12.79 billion as of May.
With the conduits, the number of borrowers is about 300,000.
