Denmark’s central bank said it will provide as much as 400 billion kroner ($72.6 billion) as part of an extended collateral program to provide emergency liquidity to the country’s banks.

Lenders will also be able to borrow liquidity for six months, alongside the central bank’s existing seven-day facility, at a rate that tracks the benchmark lending rate, currently 1.55 percent, the bank said in a statement today.

“It’s very positive,” said Thomas Hovard, chief corporate bond analyst at Danske Securities in Copenhagen, a unit of Danske Bank A/S, in a phone interview. “It’s quite cheap and it will provide a significant amount. The price for the six-month facility is the same price as for the seven-day facility, so it’s a flat yield curve. A lot of banks will utilize this.”

The country’s lenders face a deepening crisis that threatens to stall a recovery in Scandinavia’s worst-performing economy. Two Danish  this year triggered senior creditor losses, leaving international funding markets closed to all but the largest banks. Lawmaker efforts to spur a wave of consolidation and help banks sidestep Denmark’s bail-in rules have so far failed.

“The expanded program is designed to supplement financial institutions’ access to taking loans and thereby build a bridge to a situation without state guarantees, when these expire in 2012 and 2013,” central bank Governor Nils Bernstein said in the statement.

Danish financial stocks outperformed their European peers. Denmark’s banks lost 1.2 percent, versus a 3 percent slump in the 46-member Bloomberg index of European banks as of 11:46 a.m. in Copenhagen. Danske Bank, Denmark’s biggest lender, gained as much as 1.6 percent, before trading 1 percent lower at 79.75 kroner.

The difference between Copenhagen’s interbank offered rate and the equivalent euro rate tightened the most in at least a year, with Cibor quoted 18 basis points lower than Euribor.

Denmark’s liquidity lifeline mirrors programs in the euro area, where the European Central Bank has been pumping cash into the region’s money markets, including dollar liquidity, to support lenders.

The Danish central bank’s program is “broadly consistent with what the ECB has been doing,” Nick Anderson, a London- based senior analyst at Berenberg Bank, said by phone. “This was all about smaller banks. It’s clearly helpful.”

The central bank is boosting its liquidity support to help lenders stay afloat as they struggle to refinance 158 billion kroner in debt backed by a state guarantee that expires over the next two years. The central bank’s pricing means “people will dare to use it,” Hovard said. “ There will be no stigmatization from using the facility. It’s so cheap that even the strong banks will consider using it.”

Still, the head of the country’s bank resolution unit, the Financial Stability Company, said the emergency facility may not be enough to prevent further insolvencies.

The program “will probably not solve all problems,” Henrik Bjerre-Nielsen, director at the Financial Stability Company, said in an interview before the plan was announced. “The kind of financing you can get by borrowing against your high quality loans at the central bank is not medium-term financing. And medium-term financing is crucial for having a proper financing strategy.”