Microloans for people in a state of unemployment
After consulting the Bank of Italy, the Ministry of Economy and Finance defined the new regulation:
- requirements for the beneficiaries of the loan and the technical forms;
- objective limits, referring to the volume of assets, to the economic conditions applied and to the maximum amount of the individual loans;
- the characteristics to which non-commercial entities must respond in order to derogate from the aforementioned provisions;
- the information to be provided to customers.
To benefit the partnerships of companies, cooperatives with less than 10 non-member employees; self-employed or individual firms employing up to 5 employees; self-employed workers and companies that have a VAT number, active for no more than 5 years; micro enterprises with less than 5 employees. These are loans aimed at promoting inclusion and providing Microloans for people in a state of unemployment; suspension or reduction of working hours due to reasons beyond one’s control; conditions of self-sufficiency of oneself or of a family member or even a significant contraction of income or increase in expenses that cannot be derogated for the family unit.
But what is meant by Microloans?
In accordance with the decree, we talk about the financing activity aimed at supporting the start-up or development of an autonomous or micro-enterprise activity, organized in an individual, association, or corporate form, or to promote the integration of workers in the labor market. It is an economic development tool that allows access to financial services to people in poverty and marginalization.
Microloans is defined as “a small amount of credit aimed at starting up an entrepreneurial activity or to meet emergency expenses, with respect to socially and economically vulnerable individuals, who are generally excluded from the formal financial sector ” . Often the difficulty of accessing the bank loan due to the inadequacy or lack of real guarantees and entrepreneurial micro-size, considered too small by traditional banks, does not allow these productive activities to start and develop free from usury. Microloans programs offer alternative solutions for these micro-enterprises and in a sense they are comparable to loans of honor.
Therefore, the loans disbursed to the following subjects are left out: self-employed or companies with a VAT number for more than 5 years; self-employed or individual firms with more than 5 employees; partnerships, companies or cooperatives with a number of non-member employees exceeding 10 units; companies that exceed one of the dimensional requirements set by article 1, paragraph 2, lett. a) and b) of the Bankruptcy Law and a level of debt exceeding 100 thousand USD. The new rules come into effect on December 16, 2014.
