BoA says increased liquidity helped curb crisis effects

TIRANA, April 4 – Increased liquidity, lower key interest rates and the increase in the amount of insured deposits were some of the measures the Bank of Albania took in 2009 to curb the effects of the global financial and economic crisis. This was announced on Tuesday by BoA governor Ardian Fullani during a regional seminar on legal aspects of central banks, also attended by officials of French central bank.
As elsewhere in the region, Albanian banks witnessed substantial panic deposit withdrawals in the face of spillovers from instability of global financial markets, which were compounded by concerns about the health of the Greek banking system in the fall of 2008.
The increase of bad loans slowed down in the final quarter of 2010 when the non-performing portfolio registered 13.61 percent of the total loans, up 0.1 percent compared to the third quarter and 3.6 percent more compared to last quarter of 2009, official Bank of Albania data show. Meanwhile, the net profit of the 16 commercial banks operating in Albania almost doubled to 6.7 billion lek (48 million euros) at the end of 2010, up from 3,5 billion lek at the end of 2009 when banks saw their profits halved because of the deposit withdrawal impact at the end of the 2008.