Tuesday, 06 October, 2008
Unpaid loans of Philippine lenders continued to decline to their lowest in more than ten years after industry players cut interbank borrowing, the country’s central bank said.
As of end-July, commercial and universal banks’ non-performing obligations are currently only 3.98 percent of the industry’s total loan portfolio, the Bangko Sentralng Pilipinas (BSP) said.
Local lenders’ past due accounts are equivalent to pre-Asian crisis levels.
Bad loans have plummeted to P92.53 billion even as the industry’s total loans have also fallen to P2.326 trillion, the BSP said.
Net of interbank lending, universal banks’ non-performing loan (NPL) ratio was also reduced to 4.56 percent as against last year’s 6.33 percent. This was the result of the slight expansion in the loan portfolio to P2.028 trillion.
Meanwhile, real and other properties acquired rose by 1.15 percent to P147.26 billion, hiking non-performing asset (NPA) levels to P239.78 billion.
During the same period, the industry’s NPL coverage ratio went up to 97.86 percent from 96.60 percent the previous month as the decline in bad loans overtook the reduction in loan loss reserves.
The non-performing asset coverage ratio fell to 48.40 percent from June’s 48.61 percent since falling NPA reserves was met with the NPA hike.
However, the BSP said that NPL and NPA coverage for July remained higher than last year’s ratios at 85.29 and 40.30 percent.
Source: http://www.gmanews.tv/
