TIRANA, Feb.28- The bad loans amount in the Albanian banking system has reached $ 80 million revel the data collected by BoA up to the first half of 2007. During 2006 the total amount of problematic credit was 60.4 billion lek or $ 64 million while in 2005 even less, $ 33 million. The arte of increase has worried BoA, which in its latest report on economic developments for 2007 has highlighted the fact that banks are being very aggressive in order to control market shares and are not taking into account the problematic credit aspect that ah reached the figure of $ 80 million. Out of these, 8 million belong to problems observed in real estate collateral, an increase of almost 200 percent compared to the figures of December 2006 which were 2.2 million. The rate of loans for real estate transaction is the one that displays the most dynamic increase and 80 percent of it goes to individuals. This loans have increased by 131 percent compared to last year.
Poll
The poll that BoA has organized with the second level commercial banks reveals that around 50.4 percent of the collateral is blocked from the apartments and the market value is sued to evaluate its worth more often that the value of the purchase. Regarding the measures that the banks would impose in the case of devaluation of the collateral such as a price decrease in the real estate market, 43 percent of these banks would not take any measures because they have risk protection while 43 percent would require additional guarantees and 14 percent would reevaluate the existing collateral. Regarding the annual interest rates banks apply fixed norms and flexible norms for all three main currencies, lek, euro and dollar that vary between 9 and 14 percent.
