The percentage of requests from Kafalah beneficiaries increased to 106% after the Program management agreed to guarantee more than 1,432 financing requests during the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2020 compared to 667 requests during the same period in the previous year, with a total value exceeding 3,775 million Saudi Riyals.
During 2020, the Kafalah team responded to a high number of requests for financing guarantees and harnessed the entire operational capacity of the Program while updating its internal procedures to match the flexibility necessary to speed up the process of issuing approvals for financing guarantees within a maximum period of only one week.
This rise comes in parallel with the signing of several new cooperation agreements by Kafalah management with 13 new financing companies (companies licensed by SAMA), which contributed to the increase in requests for financing guarantee to 396 requests compared to 44 requests in the same period last year.
Kafalah seeks to achieve the goals and themes of the Saudi Vision 2030 in all its initiatives and products that it develops in cooperation with the Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority (Monsha'at) and the National Development Fund to assist small and medium enterprises to obtain the necessary funding to grow their business and expand their activities throughout the Kingdom and encourage financial institutions to deal with the SMEs sector.
In addition, His Excellency Dr. Fahad bin Ibrahim Al-Shathri, Chairman of Kafalah Program, commented that 4 initiatives were launched in cooperation with the National Development Fund to support enterprises with high Saudization rate, Hajj and Umrah sector enterprises, education sector and supply chains sector enterprises, to overcome the economic effects of Covid-19 pandemic. The Guaranteed Financing Initiative and the Financing Guarantees Support Initiative were also launched in cooperation with the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). The Guaranteed Financing Initiative achieved unprecedented success with total issuance of financing guarantees amounting to 12.3 billion Saudi riyals.
. The Small and Medium Enterprises Financing Guarantee Program (Kafalah) aims to attract new segments of owners of small and medium enterprises who have not previously dealt with financiers to contribute to the development of these enterprises in order to activate their important role in the national economy, whether through innovative projects for entrepreneurs, or raising rates of employment opportunities for businesswomen and the development of promising areas in various sectors such as education, tourism, entertainment, and culture.