Saudi Arabia sees surge in credit for SMEs in 2020: SAMA

Saudi Arabia sees surge in credit for SMEs in 2020: SAMA

Amount the four categories of companies monitored by SAMA, the biggest increase was for micro companies “” classed as those with less then five employees “” which saw an 89 percent rise in the total credit awarded to them.The figure for small and medium companies rose by 58.9 and 48.4 percent, respectively.Small companies are classed as those with six to 49 employees and medium-sized are those with 50 to 249 staff members.The SAMA data also showed that credit from banks accounted for 93.6 percent of credit for SMEs, with the remainder coming from other financial companies.The SAMA report said that SMEs also account for 8 percent of banks' lending in Q3 2020, up from 5,8 percent in Q3 2018.Commenting on the results, Wassim Basrawi, managing director for Wa'ed, the entrepreneurship arm of Saudi Aramco, told Arab News: "These new statistics confirm the growing confidence we also share at Wa'ed in the dynamic resilience that is being demonstrated by Saudi start-ups during the COVID pandemic.Earlier this year, Wa'ed reported that it had tripled the amount of money loaned to startups in the Kingdom last year. The Dhahran-based initiative gave out 12 loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), up from four