4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Even though more recent surveys undertaken by the Eurosystem on bank lending show that credit conditions in the crisis countries have largely stabilised in the first half of this year, around 60% of the banks report that the current terms and conditions for loans are more restrictive than those prevailing, on average, over the period since 2003.
And if businesses or consumers know that they have to pay more for a loan than their credit standing would justify, they will not even ask for credit. That is exactly where the second part of our package of measures kicks in.