In Senegal, the Agency for the Development and Support of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (ADEPME) officially launched on Tuesday, May 12th an online SME rating platform named eRating.

According to Soyibou Ndao, of ADEPME, this platform should improve the eligibility of SMEs to bank financing by strengthening businesses' management, legibility, visibility and monitoring.

"eRating can be used to assess the ability of the SME to meet its financial commitments over a period of three years," he said, quoted by Lejecos.

The platform uses two instruments. The first is a financial analysis instrument using criteria such as ranking to assess the solvency, profitability and liquidity of SMEs. The second is a scoring tool that helps identify the specific risk of each SME and its probability of default relative to the overall risk of its industry.