And within the debt market, an efficient Government securities market is essential for price discovery and for providing reliable benchmarks to price corporate bonds off the credit risk free yield curve. The key problem is that for a corporate bond market to function, we need a large number of issuers, a large number of investors and issues of a large size.
Total SBCI loans drawn down from inception to end-March 2018 stood at € million.14 A range of asset-based financing firms, peer-to-peer lenders, invoice discounters, leasing firms and other types of non-bank financiers have entered the domestic market in recent years and provide a significant potential alternative source of financing for SMEs.