Fed Says Business Loan Demand Is Surging : Economy: Survey finds strong call for credit. An economists group predicts no slowing of growth before 1995.

Demand for business loans is booming, the Federal Reserve Board said Monday, while a leading group of corporate economists forecast robust expansion this year despite aggressive Fed action to curb the economic pace.

The Fed surveyed loan officers at 58 domestic banks and 18 U.S. branches of foreign banks in May. The central bank was exceptionally frank about its findings: “Demand for business credit surged.”

At the same time, the National Assn. of Business Economists, a trade group, said in its latest forecast that there is no sign of growth easing before 1995. Even then, it sees gross domestic product expanding by 2.8%.

“Real GDP, which grew 2.6% in 1992 and 3% in 1993, is forecast to accelerate again to a 3.6% rate of increase in 1994,” the NABE summarized.

Strong business investment--not consumer spending as in recent years--will be the engine of growth, the economists said, and that will keep corporations coming to the bank as they expand their plants and boost output.

The Fed has raised short-term interest rates four times this year, including last week’s half-percentage-point boost. But the business economists said the credit tightening is unlikely to put a damper on business prospects.

“It really doesn’t look like there’s much risk for ‘94,” NABE President William Dunkelberg told a news conference. “This year, what the Fed has done with rates will not impact growth substantially.”

The Fed’s own survey of lending officers at banks suggested that, aside from home mortgages, demand for virtually every other type of credit is strong. Not only that, but banks are making it easier to qualify.

“As in the last several surveys, the results show an easing of terms and standards on loans to both businesses and households,” the Fed said, even for commercial real estate loans that were once frowned on by bankers after the building excesses of the 1980s.

The Fed pointed out that the February survey “represented the first . . . sign of an easing in standards for commercial real estate loans since the significant tightening in 1990-91.”

Home mortgage demand slowed a bit by May, the Fed found. It said that probably reflected rising mortgage rates and that some banks experienced substantial declines. The average monthly interest rate on mortgages bottomed in August and has risen substantially since then.

The Fed said that between one-third and half of all the banks that responded to its survey said demand for business loans strengthened considerably over the past three months.

That fits with the generally buoyant picture presented by the business economists’ survey, which said 1994 is getting better all the time.