MICRO AND SMEs FINANCING AND CREDIT AVAILABILITY: THE ITALIAN CASE

: The problem of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) financing and credit availability is very important for the economic development of a country. The difficulty in accessing bank credit and its costs for small enterprises becomes even more interesting considering the imminent comingentry into force of the third version of the Basel Accord. These issues are relevant in the Italian economy and financial system, where a large number of SMEs is still strongly oriented to credit intermediaries, due to thea broad, little and opaque capital market and thea low the presence of institutional investors. The scope of the paper is to investigate if SMEs are still dependent on bank loans or if they are starting to raiseing money on capital markets. Using descriptive method and data analysis, this reflection aims to give a reading of the recent financial situation and the current relationship between actors in the Italian credit market, according to new trends in the behavior of markets and intermediaries, as well as the influences by of the most recent regulatory measures. We note that despite the recent evolution of the structure of financial markets which has facilitated the direct access to a growing number of these operators, the bank loan, in fact, continues to be for small enterprises the primary source of coverage of their capital needs, because it is flexible and easily manageable and due to the impossibility of self-financing alone to ensure sustainable growth of small businesses. In Italy and Umbria (one of the Italian regions) in particular, the banks continue to play a major role in the process of lending, accounting for the preferential partner in the process of funding companies and, because of the amount of resources put into the system, a potential factor conditioning the effectiveness and efficiency of business decisions.