Bank business lending falls once more in July

The hits just keep on coming, as someone once said in the radio biz. The year-long drop in Canadian commercial bank lending continues (see prior post “Bank business lending down again in June” July 30-09).

The category is “Business loans to Canadian residents for business purposes”, and the data is from the Bank of Canada:

December: $191.967 billion
January: $186.086 billion
February: $184.168 billion
March: $184.5 billion
April: $182.228 billion
May: $180.619 billion
June: $178.301 billion
July: $176.61 billion

July 2009’s figure is clear: commercial and corporate lending by chartered banks to Canadian-based businesses is down 8% in the space of seven months. A tidy two billion bucks a month since March.

$15.4 billion of fuel out of the economy, year-to-date.

MRM