♦ The «festival» of granting loans for companies with the state guarantee now creates a new burden for the state.
The tightening of the economic and financial conditions – in the context of braking GDP growth, large deficits, still high interest, tensioning macroeconomic balances – puts pressure on companies, which begin to have problems with the repayment of loans, including those guaranteed by the state. The credit risk of the corporate loan portfolio guaranteed by the state has continued to intensify, warns the NBR, the rate of non-performing loans (NPL- non-Performing loans) exceeding in T1/2025 the 5%threshold, the highest level after the pandemic, after until last year the exhibitions guaranteed by the state registered a lower loan rate than the average. Regarding the evolution of the last years we see that in the second quarter of 2020, in the context of the blockage brought by the Covid-19 Pandemic, the NPL rate was approaching 8%, so that it would then oscillate between 1 and 2%until 2024, when it jumped over 3%. At the end of 2024, the NPL rate for guaranteed corporate credits had climbed to about 4.7%, and in the first quarter this year exceeded 5%. «The credit risk associated with the portfolio of loans guaranteed by the state continued to intensify in the first quarter of 2025. The volume of non-performing loans increased by 60%, the NPL rate being 5.3% (+2 percentage points annually in March 2025, exceeding the one registered by the whole of the companies. The grace period, in the first two years after granting the non -performance rate, being significantly lower than that of the credits that have exceeded this threshold, ”says the NBR in the report on financial stability.
Government programs of guarantee remain a significant component of the stock of loans granted to companies, representing 17.5% of the total at the end of March 2025, the central bank shows. «They continued to support the lending and increase the access to financing, a fact visible by a significant number of new debtors who have accessed such credits (representing over 40% of the total new debtors),» says BNR. The loans guaranteed by the state are contracted by over 90% for working capital, being mainly granted to construction, services and agriculture companies, similar to the structure at the aggregate portfolio. The prospect of lending with lower risks, through government programs, guaranteed by the state, has attracted that a magnet in recent years many banks operating on the local market, for example, for example in the leading positions among the guarantee ceilings allocated through the government program in the SME Invest category.
For other news, analyzes, articles and information from real -time business follows the financial newspaper on WhatsApp Channels