2022, the Most Successful Year for Garantiqa

The credit guarantee company Garantiqa Hitelgarancia Plc. closed the most successful year in its 30-year history in 2022, with HUF 570 billion in new guarantees, mainly for micro, small and medium-sized enterprise loans; the guarantee portfolio increased by 28% to HUF 2,473 billion, with the company helping the Hungarian SME sector to raise HUF 3,065 billion in loans, the company told MTI.

They pointed out that in 2022, the growth in the corporate loan portfolio of domestic commercial banks reached 13.8%, within which the stock of loans to the small and medium-sized enterprise sector increased by 12.7%. Compared to this growth dynamic, Garantiqa's guarantee portfolio was able to grow twice as fast, resulting in the guarantee institution's share of domestic SME financing increasing to over 41%.

CEO Attila István Szabó stressed in the statement that the majority of the HUF 3,700 billion in subsidized loans granted to enterprises last year under the subsidized loan programs - the crisis loans that expired last June, the Baross Gábor re-industrialization loan program available from autumn and the Széchenyi Card program with a new product range launched in the course of the year - were backed by the company's guarantees.

He added that in this way the company has greatly helped to maintain the viability of the economy, since for a large part of enterprises it was only through Garantiqa's risk-reducing role that they were able to access cheap sources of finance. “Without it, many businesses would have found it impossible to maintain their activities in the face of high inflation and rising market interest rates," the CEO pointed out.

In the statement, Attila István Szabó stressed that despite the economic crisis, the volume of guarantees issued last year amounted to only HUF 34 billion, which is 58% of the value forecasted in the business plan.

According to the CEO, the moderate redemption rate at Garantiqa proves that domestic businesses have strengthened a lot in the years before the crisis and are able to overcome the economic difficulties that have been going on for 3 years now, with adequate state support.