The SME Invest Romania programme, which provides the necessary funds for the current activity or investments of small and medium sized companies in Romania, has started its registration. The platform www.imminvest.ro, where you can register, will be operational from 23 April. You can find all the information on our website, but we thought we would answer a few questions here.

What should you know about the program?

• IMM Invest is a loan for legal entities, guaranteed by the state up to 90%;
• You can apply at least until the end of 2020. There is no application deadline. No "first come, first served" rule applies;
• You get zero interest. Basically, the state covers the interest and fees at least until 31 December 2020. For next year, the interest subsidy will be decided by a new law issued by the Romanian Government.
• The maximum guarantee ceiling is 15 billion lei. The funds allocated to the program are generous, so we estimate that they will be enough at least for those who will apply for loans on this program in 2020;
• The maximum duration of financing is 72 months for investment loans and 36 months for working capital loans/lines of credit.

How do you know if you are eligible?

• Companies from almost all sectors can access the facilities (excluding those with gambling and betting activities, investigation and protection activities, production or marketing of arms, ammunition, explosives, tobacco, alcohol, substances under national control, narcotic and psychotropic plants, substances and preparations). Companies in the areas that were and are affected by COVID-19 are not excluded.
• We will analyse the credits according to:

What steps should you take?

• Print, sign, then scan all required documents on www.imminvest.ro;
• Upload them to www.imminvest.ro;
• Choose BT as your partner bank in the program. Wink wink!
• If all goes well you will receive approval in principle from the FNGCIMM, which will send you a confirmation (as far as we know it takes a day or two at most);
• At the same time, please let us know if you would like to apply for a loan under this programme. How can you do this? Directly to the contact person in the bank, by phone of course, as we are in a state of emergency. She will point out the documents we need. Or online on our website.

What else should you know?

• The application allows the choice of a single funder.
• If your application for financing has been rejected by the first chosen bank, you have 2 more options.

What documents do you need?

• For now, the FNGCIMM notification of your intentions to apply for the program. Later, we will tell you exactly what we need to analyse your application. But we will definitely need the financial report for 2019, with the related trial balance.

At the moment, it is important to know that the guarantee ceiling is sufficiently high and the authorities have announced that the 'first come, first served' criterion does not apply, so we have no reason to worry about the timeframe in which it must be applied.

In addition, there are still things to be settled on the relationship between the banks and the FNGCIMM (such as the signing of the convention that regulates the working procedure on this program) - therefore the analysis of the financing applications at the level of the banks has not yet started.