LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s banks have provided 1.115 billion pounds ($1.39 billion) in emergency loans to small and medium-sized companies under a government-backed scheme to help businesses survive the coronavirus lockdown, an industry group said on Wednesday.
UK Finance said total lending under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) had grown from 453 million pounds in the last week, an increase of 150%.
Some businesses have said they have struggled to use the scheme to get access to cash quickly, and UK Finance said its members had approved just over 6,000 of the nearly 29,000 applications it had received.
(Reporting by William Schomberg and David Milliken)
