The continuation of the crisis has negatively reflected on the operations of small and medium enterprises, whose risks have grown markedly. The fact that this problem is widespread throughout the EU, where the crisis has hit small and medium enterprises in trade and construction hardest, is of little consolation.

The growth in risk means more difficult financing, and the continuation of the crisis means cautious demand. The result is that the credit market does not have great autonomous power to get the credit cycle moving. Bad news is that some countries faced with this problem (e.g. Great Britain) have attempted to intervene with special credit programmes, though these have failed to give results. That fact only proves how difficult it is to improve the position of small and medium enterprise under crisis conditions.

With regard to the intensive restructuring and generally low capitalisation of enterprises, incentives based only on credit programs will not give results. A broad set of measures that will ease operations in this segment, accelerate restructuring, bring those stable and promising enterprises to the forefront and reduce credit risk are necessary. Only after the application of such measures can the credit policy be expected to have results. Good news at this time is that the banks are expecting the start of recovery of lending in the segment of small and medium enterprises in 2013.