The great responsibility of the government and the banks for the exclusion from liquidity of the vast majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, highlighted in his speech to the Parliament, the parliamentary representative of the Movement for Change, Mr. Michalis Katrinis.
As Mr. Katrinis stressed, banks have so far raised more than €46 billion of funds from the Eurosystem at negative interest rates, while their deposits have also increased by €30 billion since March 2020. However, their total credit to businesses is just under €8 billion.
«Banks apply very strict criteria that allow only 30,000 businesses out of a total of 830,000 active business TINs to access bank lending, while the lion's share of the financing has gone to large companies, as the Bank of Greece confirms. So we understand that the bonds of trust between banks and small and medium sized businesses have been dangerously broken, with the government and the banks themselves obviously responsible.
For the government, as the statements of both the Prime Minister and the relevant Ministers show, their choices are not just random. They are clear choices that serve exclusively the very large companies and big business , i.e. the 1% of the economy, with the banks being covered behind this policy.
They lead to over-concentration and the destruction of small businesses, which have no access to bank loans or to the resources of the Recovery Fund.
At the same time that the government is celebrating the reduction of ‘red loans’ on banks’ balance sheets through Hercules (with the risk that the entire €23 billion of state guarantees will be written off to public debt), it does not explain why this does not lead banks to increase lending to the real economy.’
The parliamentary representative accused the government of unprecedented inaction, since the Prime Minister himself has chosen the role of a spectator, while he criticized the reluctance of banks to create financial products tailored to the needs of Greek SMEs, based on their viability.
