Credit expansion: MAY 2000
28/07/2000 - Press Releases
The July 2000 issue of the Bulletin of Conjunctural Indicators which is
released today provides the latest data on the evolution of credit expansion (Tables IV.4
to IV.7).
Total credit expansion decelerated in May 2000 relative to the previous
month and its year-on-year rate stood at 14.9 per cent (April 2000: 16 per cent). This
slowdown was mainly due to lower rates of increase in credit to both the public sector
(May 2000: 13.6 per cent, April 2000: 15 per cent) and the private sector (May 2000: 17.6
per cent, April 2000: 18.1 per cent). As mentioned in the previous press release of the
Bank of Greece on credit expansion, bank loans to the private sector rose considerably in
April 2000, mainly reflecting the fact that the measures taken by the Bank of Greece to
contain credit expansion expired at the end of March 2000.
It should be noted that credit expansion has been affected by the
relatively sizable foreign exchange valuation differences included in the outstanding
balances of loans to the private sector, as a result of the considerable appreciation of
the Japanese yen and the US dollar. Adjusted for valuation differences, total credit
expansion stood at 13.5 per cent in May 2000 (April 2000: 14.5 per cent) and credit
expansion to the private sector came to 13.2 per cent (April 2000: 13.3 per cent).
A sectoral breakdown of commercial bank lending (see Table IV.6) shows
that the year-on-year rate of increase in loans to manufacturing and trade decelerated in
May 2000 relative to April 2000, while the growth rate of loans to households (consumer
and housing loans) remained at about the same levels.
More specifically, the year-on-year rate of increase in credit to
manufacturing (which includes industrial, mining and small-scale enterprises) dropped to
8.8 per cent in May 2000, compared with 10.8 per cent in April 2000, while a similar
deceleration was seen in credit expansion to trade (May 2000: 18 per cent, April 2000:
20.4 per cent).
The year-on-year rate of increase in housing loans remained almost
unchanged (May 2000: 25.7 per cent, April 2000: 25.4 per cent). However, compared with the
first two months of the year, as well as with December 1999, the growth rate of housing
loans decelerated. Consumer credit continued to rise at the same, relatively high, rate
(May 2000: 18.9 per cent, April 2000: 18.6 per cent).