Bank Lending Up 17 Percent

Financial Tribune– Iranian banks allocated loans worth 2.08 quadrillion rials ($53.3 billion) to various economic sectors in the first five months of the current Iranian year ending August 22, 2017, registering a growth of 308.8 trillion rials ($7.9 billion) or 17.4% compared with the previous year’s corresponding period.

In the latest report published on the Central Bank of Iran’s official website, which contains data useful to monetary policymakers and analysts, the central bank has detailed the credits doled out by banks during the period.

According to the report, the service sector took the lion’s share of all the offered loans at 848.5 trillion rials ($21.7 billion), accounting for 40.75% of the credits extended to economic sectors.

This is while housing and agriculture sectors respectively pocketed 7.3% and 7% of allocated loans, the amount of which stood at 153.8 trillion rials ($3.94 billion) and 151.3 trillion rials ($3.87 billion).

The CBI report reveals that by the end of the fifth month on Aug. 22, banks had offered a total of 3,103,596 loans to all economic sectors.

As cited in the report, 1,792,859 loans were allocated to the services sector, which are relatively huge compared to the 104,479 loans extended to industries and mines. However, the latter benefited more in terms of value by receiving an average of almost 6 billion rials ($154,000) per loan.