Loan guarantees and other national credit-support programmes in the wake of COVID-19

Last update: 21 December 2021

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Credit-support measures, such as loan guarantees, have been one of the main instruments with which European countries have acted to mitigate the liquidity shock facing businesses during COVID-19 lock downs. Support measures make a complex picture since they are typically provided through a number of different national programmes in each country, and in some countries are managed on a highly decentralised basis.

This dataset and accompanying figures provide an overview of the main programmes in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, and of their take-up. Please find a note on methodology below.

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DOWNLOAD DATA updated on 21/12/2021

Figure 1: Government-backed credit support to businesses, € billions

Figure 2: Government-backed credit support to businesses as percent of 2019 GDP

Note on methodology

This dataset and accompanying figures provide information on the evolution of government-backed credit support under the various programmes in the different countries.

Credit support is mostly in the form of loan guarantees, except in the United Kingdom, where the corporate debt purchase programme amounts to a quarter of all credit support offered to businesses. In Spain, guarantee programmes cover both bank loans and promissory notes, though the latter is relatively small. Specifically, the Spanish guarantee programme on promissory notes has an allocated envelope of €4 billion. For simplicity, the smaller €0.5billion counter-guarantee programme (provided to mutual guarantee societies by the Compañía Española de Reafianzamiento S.A., or CERSA) is not discussed here.

For credit-guarantee programmes, the dataset reports the full nominal amount of the credit covered by the public guarantee, ie 100% of the credit (eg loan) amount even if the guarantee covers, say, only 70% of it.

The numbers presented in the dataset exceed the amounts of guaranteed loans actually paid out, because businesses may obtain a bank’s commitment for a guaranteed loan but then opt to not use it.

Table 1 lists all the programmes included in this dataset.

Table 1: Government-backed credit support programmes to businesses included in the dataset