The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday announced a significant decrease in the volume of non-performing loans in the Eurozone in the third quarter of 2018, falling to 628 billion euros from one trillion euros in early 2015.
A reduction was also recorded for crisis-battered Greece, although the country’s four systemic banks still, by a large margin, field the highest percentage of NPLs on their balance sheets, followed in a distant second place by Cyprus.
The percentage of NPLs in Greece, out of total lending, in Q3 2018 eased to 43.4 percent, or 90 billion euros in absolute terms. The figures correspond to a 3.2 percentage point decrease from the same quarter in 2017. In Cyprus, the percentage of NPLs dropped by 13.3 percentage points, to 20.7 percent.
