The ratio of bad loans at South Korean banks fell in 2012 from a year earlier as they stepped up efforts to write off problem loans around the end of the year, the financial regulator said Monday.
The ratio of non-performing loans held by 18 local banks came to 1.32 percent as of the end of December last year, down 0.04 percentage point from the 1.36 percent tallied at the end of 2011, according to the Financial Supervisory Service.
The bad loan ratio had been on a downtrend since 2010, when the corresponding figure stood at 1.90 percent, the FSS said.
Last year’s fall came as the amount of debt cleared by local lenders climbed toward the end of last year, the watchdog said.
They managed to write off a combined 10.3 trillion won ($9.47 billion) in the first half, and another combined 14.6 trillion won worth of bad debts in the later six months. (Yonhap News)
