Banks in The Bahamas are slowly but surely beginning to lend again, the Central Bank has confirmed, with credit to the private sector eking up by just around $700,000 \u2014 even as non-performing loans hike to $678 million.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a turnaround, said the bank\u2019s monthly report for January 2011, when compared to the $2 million contraction seen in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit to the private sector rose marginally by $0.7 million,\u201d said the report, \u201cfollowing a $3.5 million reduction last year, mainly reflecting a turnaround in commercial loans, to a gain of $19.6 million from a $2.0 million contraction in 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n
That growth, however, cannot be attributed to an uptick in home construction, with loans to mortgages slowing by $4.2 million to $7.1 million and a contraction in consumer credit more than doubling to $25.9 million. Mortgage delinquencies actually grew by around 3 percent or $19.2 million to $637.1 million during the month.<\/p>\n
The banking sector is continuing to grapple with \u201cdeterioration in their loan portfolios,\u201d said the bank.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn January, total private sector loan arrears rose by $52.2 million (4.6 percent) to $1,198.9 million, following a $16.1 million (1.5 percent) advance in the same period of 2010, resulting in the ratio of arrears to total loans firming by 86 basis points to 19.2 percent,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the Central Bank banks in The Bahamas are slowly but surely beginning to lend again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[83,153,29,98],"class_list":["post-7013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-banks","tag-business-2","tag-economy","tag-financial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}