October 26 (SeeNews) - All countries in Central and Southeastern Europe except Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia recorded a drop in NPL volumes last year, according to a report of European Bank Coordination "Vienna" Initiative.
Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania are the most vulnerable countries with higher non-performing loan (NPL) ratios and lower NPL coverage ratios than the average recorded for Central and Southeastern Europe at end-2015, a NPL Monitor for the Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) region published by the Vienna Initiative noted.
The NPL initiative draws on the work within the IMF, World Bank, EIB, European Commission and is managed by a small group of experts within the EBRD.
The NPL Monitor report reviews the latest IMF data on NPLs (as of end-2015) for 18 economies of CESEE.
The NPL volume in the CESEE region fell by 6.5% to 55 billion euro ($60 billion) last year. The average NPL ratio decreased by 0.7 points to 7.7%, while NPL coverage ratio increased by 1.5 points to 60.9%.
A 20% year-on-year increase in NPL volumes to 5.7 billion euro at end-December 2015 was recorded in Bulgaria.
In Romania, the NPL volume added 1.4% year on year to 6.5 billion euro, while Macedonia's NPL volume grew by 4.7% to 0.5 billion euro.
The steepest year-on-year reductions in NPL volumes in Southeast European countries were registered in Slovenia (by 22.1% to 3 billion euro) and Albania (by 19.6% to 0.8 billion euro), according to the report.
Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania recorded the highest NPL ratios in the SEE region of 21.6%, 20.65% and 18.2%, respectively.
In SEE, Montenegro and Bulgaria had the lowest NPL coverage ratio in the SEE region, 48.4% and 48.8%, respectively, while Kosovo and Macedonia were the countries with the highest NPL coverage ratio of 90.5% and 86.7%, respectively.
The Vienna Initiative is a framework for safeguarding the financial stability of emerging Europe. It was launched at the height of the first wave of the global financial crisis in January 2009. It brings together all the relevant public and private sector stakeholders of EU-based cross-border banks active in emerging Europe, which own much of the banking sectors in that region.
($=0.9155 euro)