Fifty
customers owe commercial banks the sum of N5.23tn, representing 33.4 per cent
of the total private sector credit exposure of N15.68tn, the Central Bank of
Nigeria’s Financial System Stability report has stated.
The FSS
report, posted on the CBN website on Saturday, also showed that the nation’s
banks gave N1.537tn loans to oil companies and some state governments in the
first six months of the year.
“The total
exposure to the
top 50 obligors
stood at N5.23tn (33.4 per cent) of
total industry credit exposure of N15.68tn,” the CBN said in
the report.
“Credit risk
is expected to
trend higher into
the second half
of 2016 owing to increased loan impairments resulting from
the depreciation of
the naira, inability
of obligors to
service foreign currency-denominated loans, as well as bank exposures to
the oil and gas sector.”
This was despite the CBN’s N338bn special intervention
scheme designed to refinance states’ debts, as well as a debt restructuring
programme introduced by the Debt Management Office, which enabled states to
restructure their commercial loans in the preceding period. However, to prevent further financial crisis,
a fresh facility of N90bn with a nine per cent interest rate was made available
to the states.”
Economic and
financial experts said the challenging economic situation had led to muted low
growth in the banking industry with most banks scaling down drastically on
their lending activities.Most banks, they added, were now being preoccupied
with how to clean up their books by recovering some of the huge NPLs in their
books.
Source:Punch News
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