Trinidad and Tobago's credit guarantee programme - lessons from five years' experience

This article reviews the experience of the Small Business Development Company (SBDC) in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) with a view to identifying six key lessons that have been learnt over the five years of operating a loan guarantee programme. T&T set up a guarantee programme in 1990 which has been severely criticized by consultants employed by both the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the European Commission. Neither of these two agencies could be persuaded to provide capital support or technical assistance to the programme, yet, after five years the programme has broadly succeeded in widening access to formal sector financial institutions for a large segment of the small-scale enterprise (SSE) market.