SMEs in the margins

If you are entrepreneur or Director of a small or medium-sized enterprise, chances are, knowingly or not, live you in the margins. If it is them that are daily in the Office, in the workshop, in the factory or in the field, at the foot of the Canyon, dealing melee with the problems of every day, in permanent relationship with employeeswith its customers, its suppliers or your bank, there is no doubt, you live in the margins.

The margins are not big entrepreneurs, supposedly representative organizations, whose diagnoses and strategies are perceived distant from the problems and needs that overwhelm the vast majority of small businesses.

It is not banking on the margins. It is only when not needed. And just when most needed is when closing the tap of the financing and makes us everyone suspected delinquent, in suspected of infeasibility in potential players in bankruptcy proceedings. "It is not my thing, it comes from above," it is often said the director of branch which recently BATEA will give us much more better credit with serious expression.

The margins are not large companies, multinationals, large financial conglomerates. Their circumstances, their specific problems and their ability to influence, are light years from the vast majority of small and medium-sized companies in the country. Their interests lie elsewhere. His cousins and their armored contracts-sounding economía-ficción. And they usually do not have problems with banks. At times they themselves are banking.

The margins are not politicians. They are not nor expected them. Economic policy, if it can be called policy to that set of erratic decisions which have been perpetrated since the outbreak of the crisis is brewing with its back to the real problems of SMEs, the self-employed, small farmers and traders. They have been concerned, that Yes, save the banks and some large companies. But they have forgotten the essential structural reforms, handcuffed by Malthusian and burocratizados trade unions that deceive with "social peace". Trade unions are not in the margins. These are always in the middle.

Who lives, therefore, in the margins? According to data from the National Institute of statistics of the 669.268 Spanish companies with more than 2 employees, 656.221 have less than 100. In other words, more than 98%. They are those that do not go in the media, which have no effect in large business organizations, which are ninguneadas by the financial system and the political class. They are which still provides employment to more than 80% of workers, which today are struggling to survive in a crisis whose Genesis they had nothing to do because they were at the margins, but suffer more than anyone else their devastating effects. Because they are still living, those who are still living, always on the margins. On the sidelines. Systematically marginalized.