Summary of the Survey on the Aftermath of SME Financing Facilitation Act (Japanese)

A number of policy measures have been undertaken in response to the financial crisis started by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the following severe recessions. They included an introduction of the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) Financing Facilitation Act, which solicited financial institutions to renegotiate loan terms and conditions with distressed borrowers and thus provided assistance to firms that were financially constrained. In order to examine the current financial status of SMEs after the termination of the Act at the end of March 2013, RIETI sent out a survey questionnaire to 20,000 firms mainly comprised of SMEs in October 2014 and received more than 6,000 responses. The main issues of the survey include: (1) effect of the SME Financial Facilitation Act on the firms' financial procurement; (2) loan renegotiations between financial institutions and borrower firms that were solicited by the Act; (3) restructuring programs submitted to financial institutions after loans are renegotiated; and (4) ex-post performance of borrower firms whose loans were renegotiated. The summary of the survey provides many novel insights on each of the above four issues. Furthermore, the survey summarizes the current status of equity financing among firms in the appendix.