BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  these measures have a longer-term structural perspective, rather than something that can address the immediate conjunctural weakness of SMEs. Overall, loan schemes, especially guarantees, tend to have a much larger impact in terms of the number of firms affected, while venture capital and similar schemes are much more targeted and restricted to specific groups of firms.
However, they have proved to be of limited effectiveness in stressed countries, given the higher funding costs faced by stressed sovereigns themselves. In terms of impact, while governments have strengthened their support measures for SMEs during the financial crisis, it seems that SMEs in most countries have not yet seen a visible improvement, at least based on evidence from survey results (Chart 9).