§ Mr. Edgeasked the Secretary of State for Industry what percentage of manufacturing industry's total investment requirements is met by the banks.
§ Mr. CarmichaelThe information available relates to the total uses of funds by companies; in general, finance is raised for an enterprise as a whole and it is not possible to attach particular sources of funds to particular uses. Provisional figures show that in 1974 bank borrowing accounted for 29 per cent. of the sources of funds, both internal and external, of large listed companies in manufacturing industry. However this percentage varies appreciably from year to year. Comparable figures for earlier years covering both listed and unlisted large companies in manufacturing were given in Table 4 of the article "Structure of company financing" published in the September 1975 issue of Economic Trends.