Small businesses operating in the manufacturing industry have been promised a bumper £1 billion of new loans. The loans will be made available to eligible firms at cut-price rates by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest, which are both looking to hit Government lending targets for 2010.
The banks’ latest pledge comes at a good time for manufacturing firms, especially after recent ONS figures showed that there had been little progress for the sector during November last year.
The Minister for Trade and Investment, Lord Davies, welcomed the move by RBS and said that “it really emphasises how manufacturing is critical to the recovery”. He went on to argue that the UK is still the sixth biggest manufacturing economy in the world.
Peter Ibbetson, Chairman at RBS, explained that the loans would offer two-year fixed rates of 3.4% and three-year fixed rate deals at 4.3%. He sai