YEREVAN, May 8. /ARKA/. Lending by Armenia’s commercial banks for trade rose by 2.9% to about 362.2 billion drams in the first quarter compared to January-March 2013, ARKA’s ‘Banks of Armenia’ bulletin for the first quarter says.
According to interim financial reports released by the banks, lending to economic sector stood at over 1.8 trillion drams in Q1 as compared to 1.6trln in the first quarter of 2013.
An analysis by ARKA showed Bank VTB (Armenia) is the leader in lending to trade in the reporting quarter and accounted for 11.9% of the total lending by banks for trade. The bank provided a total of about 43 billion drams for trade in loans (compared to 35.7bln drams in Q1 2013), which is more than 18.7% of the entire lending to trade.
Other leaders were HSBC Bank Armenia (over 40.9bln drams), Ameriabank (over 39.4bln drams), Inecobank (about 28.6bln drams) and Araratbank (over 27.1bln drams).
The share of trade loans in total loan portfolio of these banks was 25.6%, 20.7%, 33.8% and 44.1% respectively.
As of the end of March there were 21 banks operating in Armenia. ($1=413.29drams). –0–
