Wednesday, February 1 2012 21:29
Overdue loans in banking system of Armenia up almost 55% in 2011
ArmInfo. In 2011 the volume of overdue loans in the banking system of Armenia grew by 54.6% to 5.8 bln AMD ($15 mln). According to the preliminary data of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) provided to ArmInfo by the National Statistical Service of Armenia, the main 30% growth was fixed in the second half of 2011.
According to the statistics, twofold growth in overdue loans was registered in Q3 2011; afterwards 30% decline was fixed in Q4 2011. The share of overdue loans in the provision of crediting made up 0.5% in late 2011 thanks to the 35.7% y-o-y growth of the credit portfolio. In Q3 the share of overdue loans grew to 0.7% despite the continuous growth of the credit portfolio itself.
The analysts of the AmRating Agency think that the abrupt reduction in overdue loans in Q4 2011 was conditioned not by the recovery of the situation, which is impossible to gain over a quarter, but most likely by the large-scale writing-off of the non-performing loans. Judging by the statistics, almost all the overdue loans are short-term loans, whose portfolios started worsening at the beginning of the global crisis and activation of the banks in the market of credit cards, overdrafts, consumer loans.
The preliminary data of the Central Bank of Armenia provided to ArmInfo by the National Statistical Service of Armenia say that Armenian commercial banks increased lending by 35.7% to 1.27 trillion AMD ($3.3 billion). Over Q4 2011 the provision of crediting increased by 9.1%. Exclusive of extended and overdue loans, provision of crediting grew by 40.2% to 1.25 trillion AMD ($3.24 bln). The share of loans in terms of the national currency (exclusive of extended and overdue loans) was 38.6% or 482.3 bln AMD (25.8% growth in 2011), and foreign exchange loans totaled 61.4% or 768.1 bln AMD (51% growth in 2011).
In the structure of loans provided by commercial banks as of Jan 1 2012 the share of extended loans was 1.7% or 21.1 billion drams (over twofold decline in 2011), and the share of overdue loans was 0.5% or 5.8 bln AMD against 8.3 bln AMD as of 1 Oct 2011 (54.6% growth in 2011). In the structure of extended loans, the share of short-term loans was the largest - 64% or 13.5 billion drams. Almost all the overdue loans (99.7%) were short-term.
The interest rates for the loans in terms of the national dram in 2011 were down by 1.2 pct points, and in December alone - by 0.4 percentage points to 17.69%.
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