Turkish gov’t set to boost Treasury-backed funds for female entrepreneurs: Deputy PM

ANKARA

The Turkish government has started to work on a plan in an effort to give a boost to funds for female entrepreneurs backed by the Turkish Treasury, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek said on Nov. 26.

“We will make positive discrimination in offering Treasury-guaranteed funds and increase the share of women entrepreneurs in benefiting from this type of funding in the upcoming days in a 50 billion Turkish Lira scheme,” Şimşek told Anadolu Agency.

He noted there would be meetings with representatives from women NGOs to elaborate on the plan, adding that any increase in women enterprises would play a key role in surging female employment.

The share of women in total employment rose to 34.3 percent in August with a year-on-year increase of 1.2 percentage points, he added.

Over 200,000 companies benefited from KGF scheme

Şimşek also gave some recent figures about the Treasury-backed Credit Guarantee Fund (KGF) funds.

In March, Turkey raised the volume of the KGF by more than ten-fold to 250 billion liras in line with measures to boost the economy.

Şimşek said that Turkish businesses showed a great interest to this type of financial support, adding that a total of 202,000 companies had used 197 billion liras ($50 billion) of loans under this scheme so far.

“The share of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has hit 74 percent in this total. Additionally, 86 percent of loans were provided on a lira basis,” he added.

The trade and manufacturing sectors took the lions share with 38 percent and 30 percent, respectively, Şimşek also said.

Turkish banks had announced earlier that they offered almost all loans under the warrant of the KGF to businesses over this year.

The president of the Turkish Banks Association (TBB) announced on Aug. 8 that loan growth for this year is expected to be 16-18 percent and profitability to increase 15-20 percent.