Overall gross loans amounted to 40% of Romania’s gross domestic product in 2010, below Slovakia (49.5% of GDP), Turkey (50.2% of GDP) and Poland (55.4%), Fitch said in its EM Banking System Daywatch report.
At the opposite pole, Hungary ranks first with a ratio of 155.8% of GDP, followed by Lithuania (147.9% of GDP) and Latvia (129% of GDP).
Romanian banking assets stood at 60.7% of GDP in 2010, again the lowest ratio in the CEE region, the report showed.
Impaired loans accounted for 20.5% of Romanian gross loans last year, well above the 3.6% ratio in Turkey.
“Despite a return to economic growth across the CEE/CIS region in 2010, impaired loan ratios increased sharply in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, and also rose in Croatia, Latvia, Hungary and Slovenia, reflecting the lagged impact of economic contraction/recovery on bank asset quality,” Fitch said.
However, Romanian ratio in part reflects quite conservative loan impairment criteria, it added.
In the CEE region, Fitch analyses the banking system of Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.