By Walter Vasquez
The government announced that after compliance with the minimum levels of regulated portfolio on the banking side, analyzes the application of annual growth percentages for productive loans and low-income housing.
“Financial entities have met the goals and are above them, but obviously growth percentages are being analyzed, because we are interested in the portfolio not stagnating”, said the Deputy Minister of Pensions and Financial Services, Ivette Espinoza.
“So that there is an accompaniment to the GDP growth projection for this year (5.1%)it is being thought that additionally (the banks) must meet a minimum in the growth of the additional portfolio, especially the portfolio of the productive sector and of social interest housing”, he specified.
Decree 1842 of December 2013 establishes that multiple banks must maintain a minimum level of 60% of the total of its portfolio between credits destined to the productive sector and housing of social interesthe, and gives them a term of five years to meet that goal. The deadline was met in 2018 and since that year it has maintained its portfolio with those margins. In 2018 the percentage was 60.9, in 2019 it was 62.4, in 2020 it was 62.6 and last year it was 6.3.
“The relevance of the contribution to the growth of the regulated portion in recent years denotes the effort of the sector to comply with the regulation of placement goals. However, the reduced incidence of non-regulated loans constitutes an aspect that requires attention, since could entail consequences in the access to credit of sectors considered non-productivesuch as the commercial and services sectors, whose contribution to the dynamism of the economy is relevant,” says the Association of Private Banks of Bolivia (Asoban) in its 2020 Annual Report.