Banking and Finance - Scholarly Publications

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Banking Crisis, Reforms and Availability of Credit to Japanese Small and Medium Enterprises.
(University of California, Press, U.S.A., 1999-08) Owualah, S.I.
The paper examines the impact of the collapse of Japan's "bubble" economy in the early 1990s and the reforms on the availability of credit to Japan's SMEs especially in the Kansai region - Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. The extent of the credit constraints faced by SMEs was discerned from the perceptions of their owners and managers via a structured questionnaire. The study found the problem of credit availability to affect SMEs' business performance in different industrial sectors in varying degrees with the most worse off being those in manufacturing. Thus availability, not the cost of credit became a primary concern for SMEs generally. The paper advises the thrust of policy actions should be in ensuring that the conflicts from the reforms do not further undermine access to funding by SMEs.