Very preliminary (original) (raw)

Using data from the Argentine Central Banks ’ Central de Deudores, we study bank lending to SMEs and to larger firms over the period July 1998 to 2000. We consider three definitions of SMEs: system wide debt of less than $2.5 million, less than 200 workers, and a bivarate definitions that combines those two ones. We compare lending to SMEs by banks in groups determined by geographical and ownership characteristics and find little bias against SMEs from bank consolidation or from increased international ownership. We did find that during the business downturn delimited by our data, that large firm borrowing crowded out SMEs in the early period and government borrowing crowded out private borrowing over the whole period. Credit quality of bank portfolios has been worse than portfolios of larger firms and has worsened during the downturn. Portfolios of government owned banks have had worse credit quality than private banks for both small and large firms. JEL Classification: G21, E51