On the lending side, Figure 7 shows that economic recovery in the past few years has not relied heavily on broad credit expansion. Starting in 1999, the economy recovered strongly while real credit did not begin to pick up until around 2001, and even then, at a much slower rate than output growth. That said, the decline in the credit to GDP ratio appears to have stabilized recently. Against this background of sluggish credit growth, the private sector in Thailand has come to rely more on non- bank sources of financing, including internal financing, direct finance, trade credits, and loans from SFIs. The emergence of alternative sources of funding for the private sector can be seen from Figure 8, which shows recent changes in outstanding bank and SFI loans along with new equity and bond issuances.