SMALL AND MEDIUM INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT - CORPORACION FINANCIERA POPULAR

The project has provided a large number of small businesses with credit which they were unable to obtain elsewhere. The project"s total impact, however, has not been great due to poor project design, substantial personnel problems within the Corporacion Financiera Popular (CFP), and the difficulty of providing technical assistance to small- and medium-sized industrial businesses. The technical assistance program did not really begin field activity until the start of CY 1977. Given the technical complexity of this type of program, reliance on internal institutional capability was a mistake. The best possible technical expertise should have been recruited early on and assigned full time to monitor the program. Compared to the magnitude of the demand for small industry credit in Columbia, the $5 million provided by this loan is insignificant. Consequently, the project cannot be expected to have a strong, positive impact upon the problem. In retrospect, the Mission believes that the project should have been designed differently with emphasis upon policy changes within the Government of Columbia which would have increased the total supply of credit to small industry.