The share of the SMEs which raise banking loans rose from 31% in 2005 to 47% this year, according to an analysis of the National Council of Private Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in of Romania (CNIPMMR), ACT Media news agency reports.

At the same time, the share of the SMEs that finance their businesses from their own sources reduced from 80% to 77%.

Moreover, one can remark a shift in the SMEs' focus to other ways to finance the business, such asleasing - 29.71% and factoring operations - 3.29%.

The CNIPMMR study shows that the SMEs do not use non-repayable funds and issues of shares on the capital market for financing their activity.

In the past year, the SMEs sector has become increasingly more attractive for banks, which have diversified their products for this type of clients due to the bigger profit margins that can be obtained through these loans.
 
The reduction in interest rates for RON loans encouraged ever more companies, including SMEs, to raise banking loans.

The study also shows that most SMEs invested in new products (41%), whereas 0.8% of them upgraded their IT system.

According to the CNIMMR study, 82.08% of SMEs have computers, 70.1% log on to the Internet and 61.8% have e-mail address.

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