The nation's bad loan ratio continued to soar last month, driven by the drawn-out consumer bad loan issue, which may not peak until the middle of this year, according to the nation's financial regulator.
The amount of non-performing loans (NPL) increased by NT$13.2 billion (US$412.6 million) to a total of NT$410.1 billion last month, up 3.33 percent from February, the Financial Supervisory Commission said in a statement released yesterday.
With the increase in bad debts, the average ratio of bad loans at 45 local banks also increased to 2.46 percent last month from 2.39 percent in February, according to the commission.
For the first quarter, NPLs increased by NT$39.6 billion, with the bad loan ratio rising by 0.22 percentage points from the level at the end of last year, the commission said.
"We retain our forecast that bad loans are expected to peak by the end of June or by early July," Amy Chin (
The bad loan ratio for cash-advance cards continued its climb, hitting 4.4 percent last month, a jump of 1.28 percentage points from February, the commission said.
Nonetheless, the credit crunch has helped to reduce the number of cards in circulation to 3.03 million and cut the amount of total lending to NT$267.4 billion last month, which represented a decline of 4.72 percent and 4.81 percent over the same period, respectively, according to the commission's figures.
Similarly, the NPL ratio for credit cards grew to 3.17 percent last month, up by 0.15 percentage points from February, while the number of credit cards in circulation continued to shrink, to 4.36 million cards, down 1.8 percent over the same period, the commission said.
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