Bank business lending falls again in August, but decline slowing

The year-long drop in Canadian commercial bank lending is starting to slow down. For the month of August, domestic commerical and corporate loans outstanding declined less than a billion dollars. That’s still a pile of money coming out of the economy, but it’s the smallest drop Canada has experienced since March 2009.

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
August: $175.738 billion

Commercial and corporate lending by chartered banks to Canadian-based businesses is down $16.2 billion year-to-date. We are back to levels not seen since October 2007, which doesn’t sound all that horrible when put in that context.

MRM