29/05/2012 - The announcement was made in Cannes by Claudia Bugno, president of the Managing Board of the Guarantee Fund, which has total reserves of €3 billion until 2014

Film companies will have access the Ministry for Economic Development's Guarantee Fund for small and medium size businesses. The president of the Managing Board of the Guarantee Fund, Claudia Bugno, made the announcement during a meeting at the Cannes Film Festival organised by ANICA together with IFCIC and AudioVisual S.G.R., the governing bodies of the MEDIA Production Guarantee Fund.

The roundtable, which was introduced by Nicola Borrelli, director general of Cinema of the Ministry of Culture, and moderated by Isabella Tessaro, Policy Officer for Access to Finance of the EU's MEDIA Programme, offered an analysis of the current situation and an overview of the solutions already adopted in various European countries to facilitate access to credit, and allowed for the sharing of strategies to strengthen the financial instruments available to the European production industry.

Claudia Bugno explained the aims and the characteristics of the Central Fund, a concrete tool to curb the reduction in credit available to businesses, even more so as a consequence of the financial crisis. The central Guarantee Fund offers state funding guarantees for small and medium size businesses through banks and trusts. During the course of the roundtable, Claudia Bugno announced that the Guarantee Fund's Managing Board recently approved an amendment to its operational provisions in favour of film production companies, impacting on the means of access for companies with production cycles of over a year and which operate on commission or on a project basis. She also reminded participants that the Guarantee Fund recently won new funds, bringing its reserves up to over €3 billion until 2014.

(Translated from Italian)