The Australian government on Monday announced an expansion of the Coronavirus SME Guarantee Scheme to help small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) survive the pandemic.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Monday announced that the 40 billion Australian dollars (27.9 billion U.S. dollar) loan scheme will continue to run until June 2021, nine months after the planned end in September 2020.

Under the revised scheme businesses with a turnover of up to 50 million Australian dollars will be eligible to receive loans of up to 1 million Australian dollars (699,859 U.S. dollars), four times more than the previous cap of 250,000 Australian dollars (174,965 U.S. dollars).

The maximum loan term will be extended from three to five years.

"The expanded scheme will shift from providing access to working capital to helping businesses stay afloat during the crisis to now also enabling them to access more affordable and longer term credit so that they can invest for their future," Frydenberg said in a statement on Monday.

He said that more than 15,000 businesses have already secured 1.5 billion Australian dollars (1.05 billion U.S. dollars) in loans since the scheme was launched in April.

The announcement came ahead of Frydenberg delivering an update on Australia's economic and fiscal outlook on Thursday.

Mathias Cormann, the finance minister, on Sunday confirmed that there would be also some adjustments for the "JobKeeper" wage subsidy scheme.

"The ultimate objective still has to be that we get back into a situation where all businesses are in a position to pay for the wages of their employees out of their income," Cormann told Sky News.

"We will need to get ourselves into a new normal situation with businesses right sizing for the economic context that we are in."