National Bank: bad debts are practically not decreasing, but banks are still carrying this burden

First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the NATIONAL BANK Taras Nadolny spoke about the results of stress tests conducted in Belarusian banks.

“Today, we cannot say that the stress test results are worse than last year. At the same time, there are questions about the quality of the portfolio of banks and problem debt, which practically does not decrease,” he said. According to Nadolny, as of September 1, the share of problem debt was 13% against 13.5% a month ago and 12.8% at the beginning of the year.

“The main conclusion that we draw is that the capital of the banking system is sufficient to service such debts. We do not require special additional capitalization of some banks,” said the First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank.

Three banks had capital problems last year.

Now Nadolny did not specify whether there are claims against anyone. “There are nuances, but in general, the government, as the owner of individual banks or private investors, does not need to talk about additional capitalization of their banks today. Today, we regulate the volume of banks' capital through the instruments of macroprudential supervision and see these things. If the problems grow and require prompt intervention, then, of course, the National Bank will give such instructions to the owners, ”Nadolny said.

Assessing the quality of the loan portfolio in public and private banks, Taras Nadolny noted that the question is which enterprises are borrowers.

“Traditionally, the greatest difficulties are experienced by enterprises that have not carried out transformational things in terms of the organizational structure of the business, financial sources for doing business, and diversification of the loan burden. Such enterprises are now experiencing difficulties and, as a rule, these are public sector enterprises. Although there are a lot of cases when private companies also face the problem of servicing their debts,” he said.