According to the ‘Troika’ (the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank) lending to Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and households in Spain will reach its lowest level in 2014. From this point credit, especially from those banks which haven’t needed recapitalization, will gradually become more available.
Since the crisis took hold in Spain the availability of finance has become scarce and this has hit SMEs particularly hard. In the last year the availability of credit to the private sector has dropped 12% compared to a 14% rise in availability to the public sector.
The contraction of credit in Spain is not only due to a lack of supply, demand has also fallen as both business and households attempt to deleverage. Other influential factors are the government’s policies of austerity and the growing rate of defaults on debts.
Credit is set to become more freely available
in Spain from 2014