Strong growth in microcredit during the years of the crisis. This is known by Unioncamere, which in two reports presented in Rome, photographs the importance acquired by the microcredit channel and the importance of the initiatives that have arisen through it.
According to the information released, in 2011 there were 216 microcredit programs launched in Italy, with loans disbursed up by 42% compared to the previous year (106,6 million euro against 75,2 in 2010). The beneficiaries were over 55 subjects with an average nominal amount of the new loans granted equal to 9800 euros, slightly higher than the same figure referring to 2010 (9500 euros).
The relevance of microcredit must be appreciated both in social and economic terms. In fact, in a period of credit crunch and welfare cuts imposed by the objectives of containing public debt, giving life to many companies that are part of the variegated non-profit world, microcredit has indirectly played a role as an instrument to counter the effects of economic crisis.
The over 120 economic operators who, with different organizational forms and different corporate names, make up the universe of the Third Sector in Italy, have responded to the needs of 5 million users, above all in the fields of social welfare, health, education and direct employment of people in disadvantaged conditions, also covering an economic function of all importance, with 380 employees (in addition to an estimated 70 volunteers).
Saying it in the words of Ferruccio Dardanello, president of Unioncamere: "The absence of resources has therefore led the world of solidarity to play an economic as well as a social role: thus experiences such as microcredit and social enterprise are born and develop, that bend finance and profit to support families, employment and micro-entrepreneurship”.
As regards the impulse to entrepreneurs, 56% of the microcredit programs were aimed at the creation of enterprises, facilitating the birth of 5.685 new businesses, thanks to loans totaling over 83 million euros.
A particularly valuable and not obvious aspect of the social enterprise is the high propensity for innovation. In 2010 almost a third of companies declared that they had introduced innovations (31%); more specifically, more than one company out of five has chosen to concentrate its innovative drive towards organizational issues, which are extremely important in activities of this type, strongly oriented towards the use of the workforce.
