87 Percent Unmet: The Hidden Financing Crisis Strangling Business Growth Across Latin America and the Caribbean

By News Americas Now Business Editor

News Americas, MIAMI, FL, Thurs. June 10, 2026: The numbers are staggering – and largely invisible to the businesses living inside them. It’s a Financing Crisis. The International Finance Corporation estimates that 87 percent of small and medium enterprise financing needs in Latin America and the Caribbean go unmet, according to a September 2025 report by the ICR Facility on access to finance in the Caribbean. In absolute terms, the Inter-American Development Bank has estimated the financing gap for small and medium enterprises in the region at between $210 billion and $250 billion.

Globally, the picture is no less alarming. According to the IFC and the SME Finance Forum, there is currently a $5.7 trillion financing gap for micro, small, and medium enterprises worldwide – concentrated primarily in emerging markets and developing economies.

“MSMEs make up over 90 percent of all firms and account, on average, for 60 to 70 percent of total employment and 50 percent of GDP worldwide,” the IFC noted in a 2024 statement. “Still, there is currently a roughly $5.7 trillion financing gap for MSMEs.”

For the Caribbean specifically, the data reveals a region in crisis. Jamaica carries the largest absolute financing gap among Caribbean pilot countries at $2.717 billion – second highest relative to GDP, according to the September 2025 ICR Facility report. Belize records the highest financing gap as a percentage of GDP at 26 percent.

The LAC region has also seen a contraction in the supply of formal finance of approximately 4 percent per year over the most recent four-year measurement period, according to the SME Finance Forum’s MSME Finance Gap database – even as other emerging market regions expanded access significantly.

The barriers are well documented. According to research published by the Inter-American Development Bank, more than half of all small and medium enterprises in the Latin America and Caribbean region do not have access to the formal financial sector in the best of times. For women-owned businesses, the failure of the financial system is described as even greater.

“The financing gap is significant with respect to regional GDP,” the IDB concluded. “At the micro-level, the system does not serve MSMEs well.”

The structural causes are familiar – documentation requirements that do not fit the realities of emerging market borrowers, a lack of standardized deal packaging, and lenders who lack the local knowledge to assess risk accurately.

Technology platforms are beginning to address this gap. AI Capital Exchange, a platform powered by Invest Caribbean, uses AI-driven pre-qualification to connect companies including in Latin American and the Caribbean, to institutional debt capital – screening borrowers against real lender criteria in under 30 minutes and matching qualified applicants to the right lending partner.

“The problem was never a shortage of capital,” said Felicia J. Persaud, Founder and CEO. “It was a discovery failure. Qualified borrowers were invisible to lenders. We built the Whale Filter to make them visible – and to protect lenders from the 98 percent of deal flow that isn’t ready.”

The IFC committed a record $71.7 billion to private companies and financial institutions in developing countries in fiscal year 2025 – underscoring both the scale of institutional appetite for emerging market lending and the urgency of building better pipelines between qualified borrowers and available capital.

For small and medium enterprises across the Caribbean and Latin America, that pipeline has never been more urgently needed.

To check capital readiness and explore financing options, visit: www.investcaribbeannow.com/capital-readiness-check