The economic crisis caused by the effects of COVID-19 had a significant impact on actors of the social and popular economy. In Argentina, it is estimated that there are at least 20,000 cooperatives and, according to reports from the National Ministry of Social Development, 70% of these organizations noticed the effect on their activities and registered a decrease in their income during the pandemic, which affected their capacity to create and sustain employment, or even to continue with their work.
In view of this situation, COVIDA-20 Fund is created as a resilience and reactivation fund that seeks to mitigate these negative effects by providing affordable and sustainable financing in order to contribute to economic recovery and reactivation as well as the creation and protection of jobs.
To this end, the fund provides flexible, tailored and subsidized loans to financial inclusion organizations, associated groups, social economy cooperatives and positive impact businesses.
Through this model, it is expected to collect evidence on how this kind of revolving funds help to the democratization of access to financing and how they manage to address the main challenges and opportunities of a segment of the economy that does not have access to traditional credit, preventing them from turning to the informal market or usury.
Revolving funds are a resource management tool. They can receive contributions and investment from different actors in the social, private and public sectors, which are combined (blended finance) and transferred to third parties as credits. The revenue that these credits generate allows the fund to “recycle” for future loans.
As a result, from June 2020 until December 2022, for every dollar contributed by Alimentaris, at least four more dollars were received from investments and contributions from third parties that have been added to the fund, which maximizes its impact considerably. So far, 73 credits were granted, this benefits 337,669 people in 14 provinces. Besides, 891 jobs have been preserved and 18 have been created.
This fund is the result of a partnership between Alimentaris, which provided the catalytic resource and technical advice, The Sumatoria Civil Association, which manages the fund, and Potenciar, a collective impact platform, which provided strategic and technical advice for the fund design. The program started in mid-2020 and is expected to continue until mid-2025.
