Credit Guarantees

The problem of collateral is a daily issue for lenders and causes much debate in the development finance community. Given the difficulties experienced in arranging traditional forms of loan security, such as land or chattel mortgages, various collateral substitutes have been proposed. Among the substitutes for traditional collateral is the loan guarantee. Guarantee systems for loans have been proposed, planned and implemented in various countries. The assumption made by proponents of such a service is that the guarantee organization is either better informed about the risk of the loan than the lender or it is better structured financially to be able to manage the risk. Despite the apparent attractiveness of a loan guarantee, the empirical evidence available gives little encouragement. Nevertheless, interest in guarantees continues.

The Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative---a regional technical assistance facility cofinanced by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Government of Australia, and the Government of New Zealand---has undertaken landmark secured transaction reforms in eight Pacific Island countries. These reforms have unlocked the value in "movable" assets such as machinery, inventory, and accounts receivable for use as collateral in borrowing. They have the potential to benefit businesses and financial institutions that offer business loans. Yet, despite these reforms, financial institutions remain unwilling to lend. Businesses still find it hard to access the credit they need to grow, which in turn creates jobs and drives the economic activity so desperately needed in the Pacific. Credit guarantees are often proposed as an instrument to overcome this problem. However, as this publication demonstrates, there is no strong theoretical justification for their use.

This book analyses and confronts the functioning of guarantee systems for SMEs in countries where these schemes had an important development. The book also highlights how the current financial crisis is modifying the guarantees schemes, through policy maker interventions.

August 1997 One test of the efficacy of World Bank partial credit guarantees is whether they lower the interest rate and lengthen the effective maturity of the part of the credit not covered by the guarantee. Do they? Since 1994, the World Bank has provided partial credit guarantees to private financiers of several large infrastructure projects in developing countries. A major objective of the partial guarantee program is to leverage Bank resources so as to provide developing countries with better private credit terms. A real test of the efficacy of World Bank partial credit guarantees is whether they also lower the interest rate and lengthen the effective maturity of the part of the credit not covered by the World Bank guarantee. On the basis of deals closed so far, Huizinga finds no evidence that guarantees have affected nonguaranteed interest rates favorably, while the duration of the nonguaranteed credits remains relatively short. This paper-a product of the Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to evaluate the impact of World Bank guarantees.

This book is about the roles that financial institutions are expected to play for revitalizing regional economies in Japan, which face several serious problems such as a rapidly aging population as well as a sharp decline in population. The Japanese government expects regional financial institutions to contribute to that revitalization. Actually, Japanese regional financial institutions have made various efforts to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to increase their profitability and sustainability. However, the efforts have not yet produced adequate outcomes. To help clarify the reasons for the failures and to offer policy recommendations, the authors used four questionnaires to conduct surveys. They sent the questionnaires to the headquarters of regional financial institutions for Chapter 1 and to the staffs of regional financial institutions for Chapter 2. The government revised the Credit Guarantee System Reform Act in 2017 to promote financial institutions and credit guarantee corporations in order to proactively support SMEs, so in Chapter 3 the aims of the revised act are explained. Chapter 4 is based on a survey of startups that used the public credit guarantee. Finally, Chapter 5 is based on another, different questionnaire that was sent to SMEs to find out why they failed to improve their risk management and how financial institutions can help them to prepare for disasters. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, these questionnaire studies on regional revitalization have not been carried out elsewhere, making this book unique.