The Bank of Mozambique (BoM) revealed that more than 40 per cent of the credit granted by Banco Nacional de Investimento (BNI) and Ecobank was in default at the end of September last year, stressing that most national banking institutions had ratios above the recommended 5 per cent in the same period.
In the report on Prudential and Economic-Financial Indicators, the central bank explained that BNI (which is part of the list of institutions with less than a thousand customers) closed the third quarter with a non-performing loan ratio (NPL) of 41.09 per cent, but that it was already 52.4 per cent in the first quarter.
Ecobank had an NPL ratio of 43.78 per cent, followed by Moza Banco, with a ratio of 23.69 per cent, and Access Bank, with a ratio of 17.92 per cent.
From the list released by the central bank, based on data provided by the financial institutions themselves, only United Bank for Africa (UBA), First National Bank (FNB), Standard Bank and First Capital Bank (FCB) had an NPL ratio lower than the recommended 5%, with 1.74%, 2.30%, 3.50% and 4.06%, respectively.
Meanwhile, Millennium bim, one of the country’s largest and led by Portugal’s BCP, saw its non-performing loan ratio reach 5.27 per cent, while Banco Comercial e de Investimentos (BCI), led by Caixa Geral de Depósitos, reached 9.97 per cent.
At the end of 2024, BoM governor Rogério Zandamela said that the national banking sector was ‘solid and well capitalised’, but warned that non-performing loans remained at high levels.
‘The ratio of non-performing loans remains at relatively high levels,’ he described, pointing out that it stood at 9.1 per cent of the total last September, compared to 9.3 per cent in the same month last year.