Taian County offers up to 84 billion KRW in guarantee support for individual businesses... interest rate reduced by 1.5%

Chungcheongnam-do Taean-gun is officially promoting a financial support program that includes special guarantee provisions to help small local businesses and merchants affected by economic downturns. This policy combines guarantees with interest rate discounts and is expected to become an effective financial support measure.

To raise funds for this project, Taean-gun has invested 700 million KRW into the Chungnam Credit Guarantee Foundation and has designed a plan to provide guarantee support totaling up to 8.4 billion KRW. The guarantees are provided by the foundation on behalf of the small businesses, which can obtain loans from financial institutions with the guarantee certificate. Typically, the scale of such funding can be expanded to several times or even dozens of times the invested amount, making this approach a viable way for local governments to provide effective financial support when funds are limited.

Support is limited to small businesses and merchants with actual operational premises in Taean-gun that are actively engaged in business, with a maximum loan amount of 50 million KRW. Additionally, the county government has reduced the guarantee fee rate to 0.9% when issuing the guarantee certificate and will compensate up to 1.5 percentage points of the loan interest rate from the county budget, thereby lowering the actual interest burden. Compared to market rates, this creates conditions for significant interest rate reductions.

However, not all small businesses and merchants are eligible for support. Enterprises that are unable to conduct credit transactions with financial institutions, as well as certain industries such as financial and insurance sectors, luxury, and speculative industries, are excluded from the support scope. This measure aims to prevent misuse of funds and ensure that aid genuinely benefits vulnerable small businesses and merchants.

Small businesses and merchants interested in applying can submit their applications through local commercial banks or the Ryesan branch of the Chungnam Credit Guarantee Foundation. A relevant official from Taean-gun stated that, starting with this project, the local government will continue to develop various policies to support the economic recovery of the region.

Such special guarantee support at the regional level is a means to fill the gaps in direct support from the central government. It is expected that, in the future, local autonomous bodies will adopt more diverse policy responses to address long-term economic stagnation. Especially for scattered individual operators facing funding pressures during periods of rising interest rates, this will play an important role in ensuring short-term liquidity.