ArmInfo. In Armenia, the database of the ACRA credit bureau by July 2020 was replenished with data on the number of loans up to 21.548 million and borrowers up to 1.726 million. This is evidenced by the graphical report "Dynamics of the main indicators of the credit bureau" presented on the ACRA website.
According to the source, for the Q2 of this year an increase in the number of loans by 464.132 thousand was accompanied by an increase in borrowers by 3.599 thousand, and in the first half of the year the growth of these indicators amounted to 885.018 thousand and 6.939 thousand, respectively.
Thus, ACRA's information coverage reached 88.1% of the working population in May 2020, having remained at this level in June, against 87.8% in January and 88% held in February-April.
It should be noted that the share of requests to the Bureau in loans granted increasing moderately in the Q1 from 439.8% to 476.7%, jumped to 797.8% in April, after which it also sharply declined - to 475.2% in May and 456.9% in June. This means that most loan requests were made in April, when in the first month of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic, entities faced social and economic hardships as a result of a temporary ban on many activities. However, if in April one loan out of 8 requests was satisfied, then in May and June this ratio decreased to 5/1.
According to the Financial Rating of Banks of Armenia prepared by ArmInfo IC as of June 30, 2020, the total loan portfolio of banks exceeded AMD 4 trillion ($ 8.3 million), with an acceleration of y-o-y growth from 11% to 19%, with a strongly weakened quarterly growth. At the same time, the growth of non- performing loans resumed and the share of NPL in the loan portfolio shifted in Q2 from 8% to 8.3% (taking into account bad loans, which the Central Bank does not take into account due to writing them off balance). An 8.2% y-o-y growth in overdue loans (with a 10.1% quarterly growth), in turn, did not allow profits to accelerate growth rates: net profit, amounting to 40.6 billion drams ($ 84.2 million) in H1, increased by 6% per annum, similar to the rate of a year ago.
It should be noted that according to the head of the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia Martin Galstyan, due to three-month loan payment holidays, the Armenian banking system did not receive 100 billion drams in repayment on loans. It is predicted that the share of non-perfoprming loans (NPL) may soon exceed 10%. He explained that, according to the Central Bank's estimates, the growth of NPL in the total loan portfolio of the banking system is expected due to the introduction of credit holidays, as well as a decrease in citizens' incomes due to the epidemic crisis.
To recall, in Armenia since March 16, within the framework of the fight against the spread of coronavirus, a State of Emergency was introduced, which was renewed monthly and was withdrawn from September 12 with maintaining the restrictive measures. But the banks of Armenia, on the eve of the emergency, starting from March 13, announced the introduction of a credit vacation with an attendant deferral of payments and an extension of maturity. In March-May, almost 550 thousand individuals and 17.4 thousand legal entities, or about 30% of bank customers, took advantage of the opportunity for a credit vacation or revision of credit agreements. In total, about 980 thousand loan agreements were renegotiated for a total residual amount of 1.3 trillion drams, and the volume of deferred payments amounted to 100 billion drams.