Access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises after the financial crisis: evidence from survey data

Katarzyna Bańkowska, Annalisa Ferrando and Juan Angel García

Economic Bulletin Articles, 2020, vol. 4

Abstract: Using information derived from the survey on the access to finance of enterprises (SAFE), this article provides an overview of the changes in the financing conditions experienced by euro area companies over the last ten years. The focus is on non-financial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Following the Global Financial Crisis and during the subsequent euro area sovereign debt crisis, access to external finance for these firms was severely impaired. This was followed by a steady improvement in financial conditions, particularly due to support from the accommodative monetary policy measures introduced since 2012. Despite a gradual improvement since the mid-2010s, challenges for SMEs’ access to finance remained, for example in terms of funding diversification, even before the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis started at the end of 2019. The outbreak of the recent pandemic raised some new, severe and immediate challenges for SMEs in terms of their access to financing. An accompanying box in this issue of the Economic Bulletin summarises the results of the latest SAFE survey, which took place in March and April 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. JEL Classification: D22, E58, G32

Keywords: financing conditions; small and medium-sized enterprises; survey data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
Note: 235236
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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