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Cyprus Central Bank urges banks to speed up restructuring of non-performing loans

Xinhua, January 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) has urged banks to step up restructuring of non-performing loans (NPL) after some of the targets set in September were not achieved, a CBC document indicated on Wednesday.

"The overall picture is that there is an under-performance of the target for the proposed sustainable solutions, for which the target was 9.42 percent but the actual realization was 6.28 percent," the document on the CBC website said.

NPLs jumped to over 28 billion euros (about 30 billion U.S. dollars) after the Cypriot banking system was resolved as part of a messy 10-billion-euro bailout of the eastern Mediterranean island by the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund in March 2013.

Despite large scale restructuring in 2015, NPLs still represent the biggest problem faced by the banks and the economy of Cyprus, as the EU-island member is set to exit its economic adjustment program at the end of March.

CBC data showed that NPLs stood at 27.33 billion euros at the end of last October, of which 22 billion euros had not been serviced for more than 90 days. (1 euro = 1.08 U.S. dollars) Endit