The credit hurdle for German industry and trade was again lowered in August. In the eight months of the year, credit constraints have thus weakened uninterruptedly from month to month. In August, 29.5% of the surveyed firms have assessed bank lending policies as restrictive. In comparison to July, the credit hurdle is thus 2.1 percentage points lower. The credit awarding practices of the banks as a risk factor to the economic recovery in Germany is increasingly fading into the background. In manufacturing and in the distributive tradethe credit hurdle has fallen. In construction, however, it is slightly higher. In manufacturing it has fallen the most for large companies: 32.0% of the surveyed firms in this category assessed banks’ lending policies as reserved. This is 4.7 percentage points lower than in the previous month. For mid-sized companies the share of “restrictive” responses fell by 2.3 percentage points to 27.7%, and for the small firms it fell by 1.6 percentage points to 28.9%. Firms in the distributive trade have also assessed the access to bank loans less often as difficult. Here, the credit hurdle fell by 2.1 percentage points to 26.4%. In construction, however, it has risen slightly. At a current level of 38.6% it is slightly higher – 0.4 percentage points – than before.
Hans-Werner Sinn President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
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Legend: The credit constraint indicator is based on ca. 4,000 responses of firms in industry and trade from the sectors manufacturing, construction, wholesaling and retailing. The firms are asked to respond to the following question: “How would you assess the current willingness of banks to extend credit to businesses”? The answers to choose from are “accommodating”, “normal” and “restrictive”. The credit constraint is calculated from the percentages of the responses to the last of the three categories. For the compilation of the credit constraint indicator for German industry and trade, the percentage shares from manufacturing, construction and retailing and wholesaling are weighted with the average credit volume of these sectors in 2005.
Kunkel, André, "Kreditklemme: Gefahr erkannt, Gefahr gebannt?", ifo Schnelldienst 63 (09), 2010, 32-36 ( Abstract )
Abberger, Klaus, Christa Hainz and André Kunkel, "Kreditvergabepolitik der Banken: Warum leiden große Unternehmen besonders?", ifo Schnelldienst 63 (14), 2009, 32-34 ( Download )
Kunkel, André and Klaus Abberger, "Unternehmen berichten über restriktivere Kreditvergabe der Banken", ifo Schnelldienst 62 (07), 2009, 30-32 ( Abstract )
Abberger, Klaus and Kunkel, André, "Unternehmen leiden kaum unter Finanzierungsschwierigkeiten durch die Finanzmarktkrise", ifo Schnelldienst 61 (09), 2008, 29-31 ( Abstract / Download )
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