Saudi Arabia has extended a loan deferral program to help small businesses cope with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic by three months to the end of September.
The so-called Deferred Payment Program has already impacted SAR167 billion ($45bn) of payments since it began in March 2020, the Saudi central bank said in a statement on Tuesday.
The program has been extended several times to help support economic growth and employment in the private sector, and “to maintain financial sector stability”, the central bank said.
Meanwhile, the number of contracts benefiting from the Guaranteed Financing Program has exceeded 5,282 contracts, with a total financing value of more than SAR10bn.
Micro, small and medium-sized businesses benefiting from the program will be assessed to determine to what extent they’re still affected, it added.
The statement said: “The purpose of those programs are to support the liquidity level in the financial sector (banks and finance companies) and to enable the financial sector to ease the economic impact of the Covid-19 precautionary measures on the private sector, especially the MSMEs sector.”
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