Almost two million SMEs needed financing in 2023, 54.2% of small and medium-sized companies. This represents a drop of two percentage points compared to the previous year, but the figure remains well above the levels recorded before the pandemic (34.8% in 2019). He XIII Report on SME Financing in Spain, prepared by the Spanish Confederation of Guarantee Companies (SGR-Cesgar, an association of this type of entities that act as guarantors) points out that the main culprits for this situation are the rise in interest rates and the high price of the products. Despite this, they indicate a downward trend in the short-term growth prospects of SMEs. At the beginning of 2023, Spain had almost 3.5 million SMEs, according to data from the National Statistics Institute included in the analysis.
This points out that economic instability and reduced company profits marked a difficult 2023 for SMEs. “We are in a situation in which interest rates are not falling and this makes the situation of these companies increasingly complex,” José Pedro Salcedo, president of CESGAR, said this Wednesday in the presentation of the study. In 2023, only 17.8% of companies said they were in a situation of growth and improvement compared to 2022; compared to 32.2% in a stable position and 38.1% who assured that their economic situation had worsened in the last year.
However, the report provides some optimism when analyzing the competitiveness factors of small and medium-sized companies. Last year the percentage of SMEs that sell in foreign markets increased, standing at 9.7%. And the document highlights that this result confirms the recovery of the export base after the pandemic (in 2019, 8.5% sold abroad). Another fact to highlight is the evolution of the percentage of SMEs that report having carried out innovation activities in the last 12 months, which stands at 15.8% (11% in 2022).
On the other hand, looking to the immediate future, the report points to a certain downward trend in short-term growth prospects. 37.8% expect their turnover to increase in the next 12 months, compared to 41.2% who saw themselves in that position last year. Likewise, the percentage of SMEs that believe that this growth will be important decreases greatly compared to the previous study, from 8.3% to 3.4%. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who think that their turnover will decrease increases, from 15.9% to 19.2%. And 84.9% say that they do not plan to expand the number of workers in their company this year.
Regarding financial products, bank loans (20%), ICO Lines (20.1%) and credit lines (18.6%) have been the instruments most used by small and medium-sized companies in 2023 to finance yourself. But the most notable change compared to the previous year has occurred with non-bank financing: 22.8% of SMEs used this resource, compared to 41.5% in 2022. The digitalization of the business was the main reason why companies requested financing (20.4% of SMEs in 2023, compared to 11.7% in 2022).
Regarding the business fabric, the greatest growth in the number of SMEs between 2022 and 2023 has occurred in the business services sector (12,239 more SMEs); In second place, companies included in education, health, social services, culture and sports appear (+7,220); and the next activities with the highest company creation were construction (+4,910) and information and communications (+2,073). In the opposite situation, four sectors together lost almost 30,000 companies, of which 18,000 belonged to the commerce and personal services sector.