Ingen allvarlig kreditåtstramning i Sverige - en granskning av Riksbankens analys
During the recent financial crisis there has been an intense debate regarding small enterprise?s possibilities to borrow money. Statements from interest groups and results from surveys among Swedish non-financial companies indicate that their situation has worsened. Credit worthy enterprises that under normal circumstances would not have any problems getting financing are now facing financial difficulties. In contrast, an economic report from the Bank of Sweden concludes that Sweden does not suffer from a severe credit rationing due to the financial crisis. This Master Thesis investigates the economic report from the Bank of Sweden that was written in May 2009. In the light of this debate I found it interesting to examine how the Bank of Sweden could come to a conclusion that differs that much from the common public opinion. I have examined how different kinds of borrowing have been affected during this crisis by studying statistics from SCB and Konjunkturinstitutet and conducting interviews. When comparing my results with the results in the report I conclude that we both found that bond issuing actually increased at the turn of the year 2008 and that Swedish enterprises increased their foreign bank loans in the beginning of the year 2009. However, the report excludes some important aspects which make it difficult to state that there is no credit rationing. Reviewing small firm?s situation and the common procedure of large well-known bank customers to store credit lines would maybe have lead to another conclusion by the authors.