The year 2002 provided the backdrop for a great transition in the country's SME financing industry with the merger of the Small Business Guarantee and Finance Corporation (SBGFC) and Guarantee Fund for SMEs (GFSME).
The new organization aimed to be more than the sum of its merged components by surpassing both industry averages and the combined pre-merger performances of both GFSME and SBGFC.
Consider that the initial P300 million investment made by the government to the corporation was through the Guarantee Fund for SMEs (GFSME), and the GFI stakeholders contributed only P1.0 billion.