Despite the fact that the Banco de la República has risen in 4.25 percentage points interest rates since September last year, this has not been enough, for the time being, to moderate credit growth. However, the good news is that the quality of the portfolio has been improving in recent months to levels of 4%, hand in hand with the reactivation of the economy.
(Read: Rate of public debt securities TES are already above 10%).
In the last Board of Directors of the Banco de la República on April 29, in which it was decided to raise interest rates in 100 basis points up to 6%, the Issuer’s manager, Leonardo Villar, stated that consumer credit has been growing at an annual rate of 18%.
And on that point, Villar said during the presentation of the Bank’s report to Congress that the total portfolio of the Colombian financial system in the first quarter of 2021 it grew 3.5%, while in the same period this year it grew 14%.
The manager of the Banco de la República added that the commercial portfolio, as of March 2021, grew at 4.6% and in 2022 it does so at 11.3%. In mortgage credit it went from grow 5.6% to 13.9% to closing of the first quarter of 2022. For its part, microcredit grew at 1.4% and currently it does so at 14%.
“All this is the gross portfolio, when you look at the net the growth is even higher because the banks have been reducing provisions because the crisis finally passed without a financial crisisVillar said.
The manager of the Colombian central bank also said that the consumer portfolio now grows at 18.5%, “a level that generates some concern, and I read this before being the manager of Banco de la República, because if it grows too fast it can generate situations in which households would not be able to pay later. There is a need for caution, in any case, and an additional argument for the rate of adjustment of the interest rate”, concluded Villar.
the improvement
However, with these figures portfolio dynamism quality is added, which with the pace of economic reactivation also improves its main indicators.
The Financial Superintendent, Jorge Castaño, recently said that “the behavior of the portfolio in its different segments has been positive, which allows us to continue accompanying the reactivation and return to normality with social impact initiatives”.
(Besides: Interest Rate Hike Hasn’t Hit Credit Rhythm Yet).
The official also indicated that “the indicators show us that we are at a level of economic recovery, as if we were before the pandemic.”
As of last February, the total credit portfolio in Colombia amounted to $586.2 billion, which rrepresents 49.8% of the gross domestic product. Of that total, $290.5 billion is commercial portfolio, $186.8 billion is for consumption, $93.9 billion for housing and $14.8 billion corresponds to microcredit.
And according to a report presented by Castaño, with a closing date of December 2021, most economic sectors presented a general reduction in the quality indicator for risk (ICR).
Only the civil works sectors, with an ICR of 18.3% and that registered a growth of 2.6% between December 2020 and the same month of 2021, and the real estate sector with an ICR of 12.5% and a growth in the same period of 0.3% were the ones that showed decline .
The Superfinanciera report indicates that the overdue portfolio has decreased in all modalities and the quality indicators have returned to pre-pandemic levels and stands at 4.03% on average of the entire portfolio.
Housing loans, with 3.15%, present the best quality indicator, followed by commercial loans, with 3.86%.
Following is the consumer portfolio with a quality indicator of 4.52% and then the microcredit portfolio, with 6.68%.
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