Cameroon SMEs, SMIs receive FCFA 50 bln in loans

Cameroon’s International Savings and Credit Bank (BICEC), the local subsidiary of French group Banque Populaire, has so far pumped FCFA50 billion in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Small and Medium Industries (SMIs), the bank’s officials said on Friday.

This mainly comes from factoring, a financing mechanism consisting of transferring the debt of a company to a bank or another factoring institution.

This technique allows the company to immediately access cash to be able “to meet its expenses, accelerate its development by attracting new customers and new markets.

Factoring allows for funding three times higher than what would be obtained through more conventional mechanisms such as overdraft.

The Cameroonian parliament first passed the law regulating factoring in 2014, with the government particularly emphasizing that this process will diversify the country’s business financing mechanisms.