BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 24
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
The income of Georgian banks from individuals’ loans has decreased by 107 million lari ($32.8 million) in 11 months of 2020 and amounted to 1.85 billion lari ($567.4 million), Trend reports via the National Bank of Georgia.
Now, the loan portfolio of individuals totals 18.6 billion lari ($570.4 million), which is 51 percent of the total bank loans.
According to the National Bank, there are 3 million loan agreements between commercial banks and individuals. Some 1.3 million of them are consumer loans, 112,000 - mortgages; 251,000 business loans; 202,000 pawn loans are 1.2 million loans taken for other purposes.
The average interest rate on loans to individuals is 12.34 percent, while the average interest rate on loans to legal entities is 6.62 percent. The difference between the rates is primarily due to the different risks and currency composition of these loans.
However, the portfolio of overdue loans reached 570 million lari ($174.8 million) by November 1, which is 48 million lari ($14.7 million) month-on-month. Despite this growth, the rate of arrears in the banking sector remains low, at 1.54 percent, although the National Bank predicts that the volume of arrears will increase significantly in the coming months.
As of November 1, 2020, the banking sector in Georgia is represented by 15 commercial banks, including 14 - foreign-controlled banks.
In October 2020, compared to the previous month, the total assets of Georgian commercial banks (in current prices) decreased by 427.12 million lari ($129.5 million) and constituted 53.92 billion lari ($16.3 billion).
The banking sector's equity capital equals 5.63 billion lari ($1.7 billion), which makes up 10.44 percent of the commercial banks total assets.
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