The return of inflation in Japan is pushing up loan demand from the country’s small and midsize firms for capital investment and digitalization, the chief executive of Japanese lender Resona Holdings said.
Eight months on from the Bank of Japan’s move to end eight years of negative interest rates, there are also signs that smaller companies are increasingly able to pass on price rises to their customers, Resona CEO Masahiro Minami said in an interview last month.
SMEs make up the bulk of Resona’s client base, giving the bank insight into the state of firms that account for most of the employment in the world’s fourth-largest economy.