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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

CariCRIS to start rating local SMEs

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20140207

The Mul­ti­lat­er­al In­vest­ment Fund (MIF), a mem­ber of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) Group, has ap­proved a US$150,000 grant to sup­port Cari­CRIS to ex­pand its small and medi­um en­ter­prise (SME) rat­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, and to work with com­mer­cial banks to in­cor­po­rate Cari­CRIS' SME rat­ings in their loan ap­praisal process.As a re­sult of main­stream­ing Cari­CRIS' ex­ter­nal and in­de­pen­dent cred­it risk rat­ing among banks, cred­it-wor­thy SMEs will have in­creased ac­cess to di­ver­si­fied fi­nan­cial prod­ucts, which in turn will en­able them to in­crease their rev­enues and em­ploy­ment.Cari­CRIS is con­tribut­ing US$65,000 in in-kind and cash coun­ter­part fi­nanc­ing.

The project will fa­cil­i­tate cred­it rat­ings for 60 SMEs and will work with four com­mer­cial banks to use Cari­CRIS rat­ings in their loan ap­praisal process. The use of Cari­CRIS cred­it rat­ings by com­mer­cial banks in T&T will mean that de­fault risk can be more eas­i­ly and re­al­is­ti­cal­ly as­sessed, in­creas­ing ef­fi­cien­cy of SME lend­ing for banks and in­creas­ing ac­cess to fi­nance for SMEs.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the project will ex­pand Cari­CRIS' ca­pac­i­ty to rate non-bank fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions such as cred­it unions as well as in­sur­ance com­pa­nies.The new project seeks to scale the ex­ist­ing Cari­CRIS SME cred­it rat­ing mod­el pi­lot­ed with 25 SMEs in T&T in a 2010 MIF project. A study by Kairi Con­sul­tants es­ti­mat­ed that there are 18,000 SMEs in T&T, ac­count­ing for an es­ti­mat­ed 28 per cent of GDP, and rough­ly 25 per cent of to­tal em­ploy­ment.Cari­CRIS is head­quar­tered in T&T, but its rat­ings are al­so wide­ly utilised in the rest of the Caribbean, with more than half of its rat­ings hav­ing been con­duct­ed out­side of this coun­try.

While SMEs in this project are lo­cat­ed in T&T, the com­mer­cial banks in­volved have a re­gion­al pres­ence and will be able to utilise Cari­CRIS cred­it rat­ings in SME loan ap­praisals through­out the Caribbean.Project team leader Win­some Leslie of the MIF said: "Com­mer­cial banks' ten­den­cy to avoid what they per­ceive as risky lend­ing has se­vere­ly lim­it­ed the sup­ply of SME fi­nance, not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but through­out the Caribbean."We be­lieve this project with Cari­CRIS will help both banks and en­tre­pre­neurs find new part­ners and will al­low both sec­tors to grow."

Cari­CRIS' CEO Wayne Dass said: "We are de­light­ed to part­ner with the MIF in this im­por­tant SME de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive."The project will not on­ly main­stream the use of risk rat­ings in SME lend­ing, there­by lead­ing to in­creased ac­cess to fi­nance by the SMEs, it will al­so re­sult in more ef­fi­cient and com­pet­i­tive en­ter­pris­es in the re­gion."


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