Banks provided business loans of more than US$4 billion in 2020 to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to enable them to overcome the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Arab News. The size of this lending represented a 106% increase over the corresponding figure of 2019, said Homma Hashem, general manager of Small and Medium Enterprises Loan Guarantee Programme, also known as Kafala. Meanwhile, the SMEs’ borrowings across the country have continued to grow in the first quarter of 2021, according to figures released by the Saudi Central Bank on September 6.
