The year-on-year rate of change in the CPI for all items excluding fresh food and energy – which was negative before the introduction of QQE – has remained positive for 31 consecutive months since October 2013, and has been about 1 percent recently.
At the same time, other sources of external finance – the net issuance of debt securities and shares by non-financial corporations – have benefited from more favourable capital market conditions, improving corporate profits and increasing retained earnings. The easing is especially felt by small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), which are heavily reliant on bank credit.