A Bank of Ghana (BoG) report has indicated an increase in banks’ bad debt in the first eight months of 2023.

According to its Banks Income Statement, commercial banks wrote off GH¢2.416 billion as bad debt in the first eight months of this year.

This indicates a 36.4% increase from what was recorded in 2022.

As of June 2023, the figure stood at GH¢1.713 billion.

The bad debts include loan losses, and depreciation, among others.

Non-Performing Loans

Non-Performing Loans ratio increased to 20% in August 2023 from 14.3% in August 2022.

The NPL stock increased by 53.6% to GH¢14.5 billion in August 2023, from GH¢9.5 billion in August 2022.

The Bank of Ghana said the industry’s assets quality weakened and this was reflected by the rise in the Non-Performing Loan (NPL) stock and Non-Performing Loan (NPL) ratio.

Also, for the fully provisioned loan loss category, the NPL ratio increased sharply to 9.0% from 3.8%.

This was due to increasing shares of both sub-standard and doubtful loans in the NPL stock, the Central Bank said.

The report noted that the rise in the NPL ratio is attributed to the higher growth in the NPL stock relative to the growth in total loans.

SSD/MA


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