The Bank of Greece (BoG) on Tuesday unveiled targets for non-performing exposures (NPEs) in the country, while noting that the Olympus-sized “mountain” of exposures in the crisis-battered country fell by a marginal 1 percent – compared to December 2016 – to total 105 billion euros.
Greek banks made progress in their fight to cut their exposure to doubtful and non-performing loans in the first quarter, data from the country’s central bank showed on Tuesday.
But corporate, mortgages and consumer lending that has turned bad during years of crisis still accounts for slightly more than half of the banking sector’s overall loan book, data released by the Bank of Greece revealed.
A mountain of non-performing exposures (NPEs), comprising non-performing loans (NPLs) and restructured loans likely to turn bad, is the biggest challenge facing Greek banking.
Greek banks began the economic crisis in 2008 with NPEs of 14.5 billion euros ($16.32 billion) or 5.5 percent of loans. Cutting these would free up more capital to fund productive sectors of the economy, which is still struggling.
While NPEs soared to 106.9 billion or 50.5 percent at the end of June last year, banks trimmed the figure to 103.9 billion euros, excluding off-balance sheet items, in the first three months of the year, beating a target of 105.2 billion.
Their NPE ratio was on target at 50.6 percent at the end of the first quarter, while on NPLs, loans past due for more than 90 days, banks missed the target as the rate came to 36.7 percent at the end of March versus a targeted 36.05 percent.
The figures emanate from data collected as of March 2017.
On a somewhat brighter note, the figure was down by 3 percent from its peak in March 2016, or 3.5 billion euros in absolute terms.
The report, in its entirety, can be found here.
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