Bookmark & Share
(SINGAPORE) More than 7,300 government-backed loans totalling $4 billion were approved in the first half of this year, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Compared with the Asian financial crisis, the slowdown in bank lending here during the current crisis has been milder, MAS managing director Heng Swee Keat said.
'While credit conditions have tightened, there has not been disruption of credit flows to corporates.'
Still, bank loans to businesses fell for the seventh straight month in May, although the pace of decline was less than 0.1 per cent, slower than the 0.9 per cent fall in April.
Total bank loans to businesses have fallen 5.7 per cent from the peak of $163.2 billion at end-October last year, though economists say this is also due to lower demand for borrowing as businesses shelved expansion plans due to the recession.
Since Feb 1, the government has offered to guarantee up to 80 per cent of the risk of new loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to encourage banks to lend to such firms.
'The introduction of the government-backed loan scheme was timely,' said Linus Goh, global head of enterprise banking and financial institutions at OCBC Bank.
'It shored up market confidence at a critical time and helped to stabilise the supply of credit to SMEs.'
Overall bank lending rose slightly in May, as consumer home loans continued to grow.
Total Singapore-dollar bank loans at end-May stood at $270.8 billion, up 0.3 per cent from a month earlier.
Search Property News
