Ultimately it has to be the private sector which has to take the lead role in lending to the SME sector given their critical positioning and greater capacity in terms of their outreach and availability of funds. As I earlier mentioned, the actual statistics for lending to SMEs have not been encouraging in recent years.
The U.S. and Japanese Economies since the Outbreak of COVID-19 The U.S. and Japanese economies both have faced the shock of the pandemic, which is larger than anything experienced in the postwar era (Chart 1).