SMEs: Problems getting finance, but govt U-turn on FTs?

http://sbr.com.sg/financial-services/news/over-half-singapore-smes-application-financing-got-rejected-in-2012

And wonder if the SME financing target mentioned in this BT report from sometime in the middle of 2012, was met. As not heard any more, I suspect not.

UP to $175 million of the $250 million the government has earmarked for investment in small- and medium-sized enterprises under the first phase of its public-private co-investment funding programme for local SMEs will be seeded with private equity funds by year-end.

The programme includes a fund-of-funds called the SME Catalyst Fund, which the $175 million investment falls under, and a direct co-investment fund called the SME Co-Investment Fund.

This means that some $350 million will be placed with the PE funds by the end of this year for investment in SMEs, as the private sector has to match dollar-for-dollar what the government is putting with the PE funds.

The $350 million is part of the first phase of the co-investment fund that is expected to come up to $500 million – $250 million from the government, and the other half from private sector capital.

As to whether the White paper on population reflects a U-turn on the policy of starving SMEs of cheap FTs, only time will tell. Watch and wait. Remember the WP was bitching in parly about the shortage of labour among SMEs. Chinese-owned SMEs fund the WP.

Time for a SME bank?

Even the  govt in UK is setting one up to bring together ‘alphabet soup of existing schemes’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2012/sep/03/business-bank-george-osborne.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19641548

We too have  ’alphabet soup of existing financing schemes’ to help SMEs. But SMEs are always asking for more for whatever reason.

And this. A new institute has been set up to offer subsidised business consulting for SMEs. United Overseas Bank (UOB) and the Singapore Management University (SMU have set up the UOB-SMU Asian Enterprise Institute,  which aims to equip local firms with information and expertise to help their regional expansion.http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/1227153/1/.html

A reason not to help SMEs

Well when PAP and WP MPs. SDP activits and Tan Jee Say are worried about the fate of SMEs,all saying shumthing must be done to help the SMEs, then something must be done to help them?

Maybe not: Where small firms are most common, as around Europe’s southern periphery, their prevalence is sign of uncompetitive markets and low productivity … examines the problem of the stunted European business http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/03/productivity

Ah, what about the German SMEs? Well the Germans are different. They stated two world wars in the 20th century, lost both of them but 67 years after failing to create a Third Reich is now the dominant European power; restructured their economy when Eurozone interest rates were too high for Germany (they cut real wages and welfare payments, and raised productivity, unlike the lazy, lying, thieving Greeks who only know to riot, lie and steal); and sell to China the machinery to make goods that China exports.

S’poreans are not Germans. For starters, the German government, like the Germans, doesn’t believe in FTs to solve Germany’s vanishing workforce problem: 20% over the coming decades. The Germans believe in robots and moving manufacturing to eastern Europe (their M’sias and Indonesias).

Also unlike our SMEs, the most succesful German SMEs are global leaders in their very specialised fields. Finally most of our SMEs would not fit the German definition of SMEs. Ours would be classified as micro enterprises