Business plan in Algeria: what the bank actually does with it, and how to structure it accordingly

1. 1. What is a business plan actually for, in front of an Algerian bank?

A relationship manager does not read your business plan to form an opinion. They read it to feed an analysis whose framework is imposed on them. Understanding that framework changes how you write, from the first page.

Regulation No. 14-03 of 16 February 2014, on the classification and provisioning of loans and off-balance-sheet commitments, requires banks and financial institutions to classify their exposures against regulatory criteria and to provision accordingly. A file is therefore not accepted or refused on instinct: it is documented, because the bank must be able to justify its classification.

Regulation No. 12-01 of 20 February 2012 governs the corporate and household credit register. Your existing commitments and their history are recorded there. Many project owners overlook this: the business plan is read against what the bank already knows about you.

The ratios your bank must calculate, and how they are read, are covered separately in what regulation obliges your bank to calculate about you.

2. 2. The only official template in Algerian law

Most business plan models in circulation are adaptations of foreign frameworks. Yet since April 2026 Algerian law contains a template prescribed by regulation: Annex V of Executive Decree No. 26-154 of 14 April 2026, published in Official Journal No. 31 of 28 April 2026, which sets the content of the techno-economic study required in the economic land file.

The template has nine parts, from identification of the project owner through to annexes, covering the production process, the funding plan and the profitability indicators. It was designed for an investment file addressed to the administration, but from our engagements it is also the best available skeleton for a bank file — for a simple reason: it is the only one that is officially expected anywhere.

What to add for a bank file

Two elements, absent from a study aimed at the administration, are indispensable in front of a bank:

• The repayment schedule set against a month-by-month cash flow forecast: the bank's question is not "is the project profitable?" but "do the instalments fall due when the money is there?";
• The proposed collateral package, including institutional guarantees — see our article on alternatives to mortgage collateral.

3. 3. Financial projections: the three statements that decide

A business plan may run to forty pages; the analysis concentrates on three tables. If they are not consistent with one another, the rest will not be read.

The third line kills the most files — and the most companies after funds are released. A business that is profitable on paper can end up unable to pay through a simple collection lag: the subject is developed in our article on why a profitable company can still fail.

Three scenarios, not one

A practice we apply systematically in our engagements; it is not a regulatory requirement: present the project under three assumptions — conservative, base and downside — varying only two or three parameters (volume, price, collection period). The aim is not to show the project works in every case; it is to show the point at which it stops working. A file that identifies its own breaking point inspires more confidence than a uniformly optimistic one.

4. 4. How much personal contribution should you state?

This is the most frequently asked question, and the one surrounded by the most approximation. The figure of "30%" is often put forward as a general rule: it corresponds to no text of universal application.

The only published, quantified scale applicable to business creation is that of NESDA, the National Agency for Entrepreneurship Support and Development, which publishes its financing formulas and contribution rates: self-financing, mixed financing and triangular financing, each with its split between personal contribution, interest-free agency loan and bank share.

A word on form: the contribution must be traceable. From our engagements, a contribution stated but not evidenced by documented bank movements is one of the most common triggers for requests for additional information. Preparing that evidence before filing saves a full round trip.

5. 5. The six mistakes that get a business plan rejected

The observations below come from our professional practice, not from a regulatory standard. They are ordered by decreasing frequency in our engagements.

1. Internal inconsistency between tables. Revenue in the income statement that does not reappear in the cash flow forecast. It is an analyst's first check, and the fastest.
2. Unjustified assumptions. A selling price, margin rate or volume stated with no indication of origin. Every assumption should trace back to a source: a quotation, a published tariff, field research, a contract.
3. Missing working capital requirement. Financing the investment without financing the operating cycle puts the company in difficulty from the first month of trading.
4. Unrealistic collection periods. Contract terms are not observed terms. A cash flow forecast built on the former is simply wrong.
5. No downside scenario. A file that only works under one assumption is a fragile file, and it shows.
6. Volume at the expense of readability. A long document is not a solid one. Clarity in the chain of figures matters more than page count.

If your file has already been refused, the steps to take before resubmitting are set out in our article on credit refusal: the five-point diagnostic.

FAQ — Frequently asked questions

BENSAID Farouk

Financial & Economic Research Consultant — ProfitPilot NextGen Consulting

Certified sole trader and expert in financial studies, risk analysis and market research for SMEs, startups and investors in Algeria. View full profile →