Friday, September 14 2012 19:10
Current rate of growth in the amount of overdue loans is not dangerous for stability of Armenia's banking system
ArmInfo. The current rate of growth in the amount of overdue loans is not dangerous for the stability of Armenia's banking system, President of the Union of Banks of Armenia Ashot Osipyan told journalists on Friday.
According to the Union, in Jan-June 2012 the loans of the Armenian banks grew by 16%, in Q2 2012 by 9.5% to 1.5trl AMD. As a result, the assets grew by 6.5% and 7.5%, respectively, to 2.2trl AMD. The obligations grew by 7.2% to 1.8trl AMD, wherein the time deposits grew by 17.3% to 754.9bln AMD, while the call ones dropped by 9.6% to 371bln AMD. The total capital grew by 3.3% to 387.3bln AMD. The number of plastic cards grew by 16% to 1,133,000: ArCa by 11% to 435,000, Visa by 21% to 439,000, MasterCard by 20% to 217,000. Some 85 ATMs and 830 POS- terminals were launched during the period. So, now the banks have a total of 1,094 ATMs and 5,985 POS-terminals. The inflow of money transfers made up $924mln (70% from Russia, 7% from the United States).
According to ArmInfo's Ranking of Commercial Banks of Armenia, in Jan- June 2012 the net profit of Armenia's banking system totaled 17.9bln AMD – 15.8% less than in Jan-June 2011. The amount of overdue loans redoubled due to bad, nonprime and supervised loans. Most of the bad loans were SME support loans in industry, trade and agriculture. Most of the bad consumer loans are mortgage credits.