New York, April 29 - U.S. consumers are finding it much harder to get access to credit and this is limiting their ability to spend, the head of Wal-Mart Stores Inc's U.S. business said on Tuesday.
"People don't have as much access to credit as they used to," said Eduardo Castro-Wright, speaking at a Lehman Bros. retail conference broadcast over the Internet. "Cleary that is having an impact on how consumers behave."
Without easy access to credit, he said consumers are finding it has become more difficult to splurge on nonessential or big-ticket items.
In recent years, the same easy credit that helped fuel the U.S. housing boom and the surge in mergers and acquisitions also financed consumer spending.
But credit is becoming harder to come by as banks clamp down to protect battered balance sheets. That means consumers are going back to doing things the old-fashioned way -- setting budgets based on income, not credit.
Castro-Wright said that during the holiday season there is typically a big jump in credit as shoppers use credit cards to support their holiday shopping sprees.
"We didn't see it this year," he said of that jump.