At present, however, they are not under any restrictions in terms of financial strength with a sufficient amount of capital, and have taken an aggressive lending stance toward positive demand for funds. In fact, they have recently increased loans to large firms for mergers and acquisitions and acquisition of interest in natural resources, as well as real estate-related loans and overseas loans.
Nevertheless, such activity is still limited. Loans to small and medium-sized firms have remained sluggish. Although financial institutions have advanced their initiatives to facilitate financing in recent years, improvement in the quality of their loan assets has been slow.