Small business access to capital and credit Given the importance of small businesses to our economy, and their heavy reliance on credit to facilitate growth, the Federal Reserve has taken a leading role in efforts to improve the understanding of factors that bear on the availability of funds to support small business activity.
Our most recent report to the Congress in September on the availability of credit to small businesses provides an extensive review of developments in recent years. In the report, we noted that business-financing flows to both large and small borrowers, after having been strong in the late 1990s, have since moderated along with the pace of economic activity.