After the shock of the pandemic, the business fabric had to use public aid to survive an unprecedented economic crisis. Among the measures deployed by the Government were the credits guaranteed by the State through the guarantee of the Official Credit Institute (ICO). In total, in 2020 just over 165,000 million euros had been granted. Since then, thanks to the economic rebound, that ICO portfolio has fallen sharply: in 2021 loans for 49,000 million (-30%) were repaid and last year, another 19,000 million (-16.4%). Thus, until reaching the 97,100 million that are still in force as of December 31, 2022, as published this Thursday by the Bank of Spain.
This figure is divided into two parts: about 88.1 billion publicly guaranteed loans in the context of the coronavirus crisis and another 9 billion other loans with restructuring or refinancing measures (also related to the pandemic) that have not yet matured. . “This decrease originated, to a large extent, in new loans and advances subject to public guarantee programs in the context of the covid-19 crisis, which fell to an amount of 88,000 million euros, from 93,900 million euros in the third quarter of 2022”, explains the supervisor in his statement.
Information on the health of this portfolio also includes the Financial Stability Report, published by the Bank of Spain this Wednesday. In the document, the institution includes a notable increase in delinquency: “Among the ICO loans classified as doubtful, the delinquents (which have already incurred objective default) were the ones that rose the most (177% in the interannual rate), while doubtful non-delinquents did so to a lesser extent (29.6% in the interannual rate)”, the text explains.
In this way, there are more loans in trouble, although with nuances. Ángel Estrada, general director of financial stability, regulation and resolution of the agency, explained that the variation in the percentage of unpaid loans has grown more due to the amortizations that have occurred. In other words, since the total is lower, for the same volume of doubtful loans, the delinquency rate will be higher, which may indicate a higher growth of the real. Despite this, this effect does not mean that it has also grown in volume.
At the end of 2022, ICO loans classified as doubtful stood at 7.1% (3.6 points more). If the size of the portfolio had not decreased (without amortizations in the past year), the doubtful ratio would be 6.3%: it would grow, but not by that much. On the other hand, those classified under special surveillance stood at 19.6%, almost one point below the closing proportion of the previous year. Between both metrics, slightly more than a quarter of the loans are at risk of non-payment: the total volume of loans guaranteed by the State is reduced, although the part at risk runs aground.
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