Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 7 January 2020.
I thank David Melding for that question. It is interesting, isn't it, and I would expect he's had some of the same experience, that when you talk to commercial lenders, they tell you that there is no shortage of liquidity, and they set large sums of money aside for investment in businesses, and yet, when you talk to businesses, they often complain about how difficult it is to obtain the investment that they need to carry out the plans that they say would expand their business.
So, part of what we do as a Government is to talk to the big lenders to try and persuade them that they have to find different ways of having conversations with people who are looking to borrow money to persuade them that their services are genuinely available to them.
Where big commercial lenders are not prepared to enter the market, that's why we have the Development Bank for Wales—£5.2 million spent in the last 12 months, Llywydd, helping 240 Welsh businesses with micro loans, of the sort that commercial lenders are not prepared to provide. So, the Welsh Government operates to try to be a broker between those who are looking for investment, and those who can provide it on a commercial basis, because where it can be commercially provided, that's what should be done, and where a commercial loan is unlikely to be forthcoming, then we try and use the instruments that we have available to fill those gaps in the market.