Auto loans down 2.4%

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported a quarterly decline in automobile loans in September, indicating a slowdown in sales in the automotive industry as a result of historically high oil prices.

Data from the BSP showed that automotive loans of universal and commercial banks (UKBS) as well as thrift banks, including the non-bank subsidiary of UKBs, went down 2.4 percent from P79.1 billion to P77.2 billion.

The BSP did not present an annual comparative data, however, because of the shift in financial reporting based on the provisions of the Financial Reporting Package.

This reporting system now reflected only automobile loans to individual for consumption purposes compared with the previous definition which included sales to corporations for their corporate uses.

The BSP said its data showed that thrift banks accounted for the bulk of automobile loans at 56.3 percent, while UKBs accounted for 43.6 percent while non-bank subsidiaries of UKBs accounted for the remaining 0.1 percent.

The BSP said the proportion of non-performing auto loans to the total auto loans of banks remained at 5.1 percent because the 2.7-percent decline in auto loans was matched by the 2.7-percent decline in non-performing auto loans.

Meanwhile, the BSP said the non-performing auto loans of banks accounted for 2.8 percent of total non-performing loans, actually improving from three percent in the previous quarter.

The BSP also reported that the bad loans of thrift banks continued to improve in September, now standing at 6.61 percent compared with 6.7 percent in the previous quarter.

The BSP said the end-September ratio was significantly better than the 7.48-percent ratio over the same period last year, pinning the ratio below the pre-crisis level of 7.74 percent.