1

1

E-mail Article

Printer Friendly

Share Article

Banks slash provisions for non-performing loans

Banks in the UAE cut provisions for non-performing loans by about 40% in the second quarter to their smallest since at least 2003, according to central bank data published on Thursday.

Banks in the second-largest Arab economy set aside 19.26 billion dirhams ($5.25 billion) to cover potential losses from loan defaults on June 30, compared with 33.15 billion dirhams on March 31, the data on the central bank website showed.
Provision for non-performing loans has not fallen below 30 billion dirhams at any point in the central bank data, which covers the end of the last five quarters, and December 31 for every year from 2003.

Some banks had written off loans after years of non-payment, a central bank official told Reuters, when asked to explain the decline.

"These loans were big and very old loans, more than 20 years," said the official in the statistics department, who did not want to identified.

No Comments