(Small businesses) "Mass bankruptcies among the 2.9 million small and medium businesses imminent"

Pressian has a piece on the plight of the small and medium businesses, which depend on the slow domestic market. Yi Hôn-jae (Lee Hun-jae?), vice premier and minister of finance has gathered together a ministerial meeting (?), and come out demanding that financing insitutions delay the reclaim of loans (여신 회수). Helping small and medium businesses is all good, and as visitors perhaps know small businesses and their keepers are close to my heart, but demanding that financing institutions don't do their job properly doesn't look that good either. Kwanch'i kûmyung is the word that comes to mind, used mostly when government officials tell banks to give loans, but telling banks not to collect loans is no different. One can also ask whether the banks have been doing their job when giving out loans. (For that, I don't know enough to make any judgement.) Small and medium companies have been getting more and more loans, and their combined amount of loans in the 19 domestic banks is seven times that of big companies. 월말 현재 국내 19개 은행들의 대기업 대출 잔액은 32조4천1백97억원에 불과했으나, 중소기업 대출은 7배가 넘는 2백33조2천93억원에 달하고 있다. 대기업들이 은행돈 쓰기를 기피하자, 은행들이 그동안 중소기업 대출에 주력해온 결과다. Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: businesskeepers ∙ Koreaneconomy ∙ money