FRANKFURT (AFP) ― Eurozone banks are continuing to tighten their lending rules even as their own access to funding is improving, the European Central Bank said on Wednesday.

But demand for credit in the 17 countries that share the euro could soon be stabilizing, adding to evidence of a calming in the financial markets, ECB data showed.

In its latest quarterly Bank Lending Survey, which quizzed a sample of 131 banks in the euro area, the ECB said slightly more banks said they would tighten the criteria that businesses must meet to take out loans in the first quarter of the year.

A net 15 percent of respondents indicated they would do so, after a net 13 percent of banks had already tightened their credit standards in the fourth quarter, the survey ― conducted between December 14 and January 10 ― showed.

At the same time, the survey found that banks’ access to retail and wholesale funding had improved in the fourth quarter of 2012 and would continue to do so in the first quarter of this year.

On the demand side, overall demand for loans remained weak but could soon be showing the first signs of stabilization, the survey said.

While euro area banks “continued to report a pronounced net decline in demand for loans to enterprises in the fourth quarter of 2012,” there was a less pronounced decline in demand for loans to households for house purchase and for consumer credit, it said.

Looking ahead to the current quarter, “banks expect a less pronounced net decline in demand for loans to enterprises,” the ECB added.

Earlier this week, separate ECB data showed that demand for credit remains weak, with eurozone bank loans to the private sector declining by 0.7 percent in December compared with the same month in 2011 after already shrinking by 0.8 percent in November.

Nevertheless, analysts believed the financial markets are slowly on the mend.

Barclays Research economist Thomas Harjes said that, “all in all, the January ECB bank lending survey adds to the evidence... of stabilization in the financial sector.”

But he cautioned: “The repair of the bank lending channel in the euro area remains a work in progress.”

The main contributing factors for the continued tight credit conditions “continue to be the weak economic environment and still subdued expectations about future economic activity, which are keeping loan risk perceptions at elevated levels,” he explained.

Lending standards tightened slightly for household loans, both mortgages and consumer credit. At the same time, they eased marginally for firms, the expert noted.

“The latter tend to lead the former over the business cycle, which is consistent with a gradually improving outlook for the euro area economy,” Harjes argued.

Tom Rogers of Ernst & Young Eurozone Forecast said the lending survey “underscores the extent to which eurozone banks’ underlying financial conditions have improved, but credit flows nevertheless remain blocked by economic gloom and risk aversion.”

The fundamental economic picture does not look set to change any time soon, he said.

“Firms and households remain constrained by structural challenges to be faced in the coming year, and this continues to constrain both demand for loans and banks’ appetite to lend,” Rogers said.

“As a result, the improvement in financial markets over recent weeks in itself seems unlikely to have done much to spur lending, investment, and a pick-up in growth in 2013, the analyst concluded.