Posts Tagged ‘Swiss Micro-Loan Fund’

Global Similarities, Part Two

Monday, May 11th, 2009
An Uphill Battle

An Uphill Battle

In an earlier blog posting, I wrote of the difficulties small businesses in the United Kingdom were experiencing with respect to access to credit, even in obtaining loans from banks that had received government assistance. It isn’t just the Anglo-Saxon countries where the flow of credit to small businesses is blocked. Zwanzig Minuten (a daily newspaper, the title means “Twenty Minutes”) reports that the Swiss government is establishing a loan fund to aid small and medium enterprises throughout the country with loans of up to CHF 40,000.  We tend to think of the large corporate enterprises as dominating employment in Switzerland, particularly the banks and pharmaceutical companies. In fact, in Switzerland, as in the United States, small businesses account for more than one-half of all employment. The Swiss economy is also in recession, with economic contraction of 2.2% projected for this year. Switzerland also had its version of a government bailout: UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) accepted government assistance, Crédit Suisse did not. And, consistent with the trend we have seen, Swiss small businesses are also struggling with issues around access to credit. I lived as an ex-patriate in Zurich, Switzerland; this photograph is the famous Matterhorn, perhaps symbolic of the tough obstacles small businesses everywhere face.