Banks to heed BoG call for lower NPE targets

Greece's four systemic banks intend to downwardly revise their nonperforming exposure (NPE) targets for 2019 and the years to follow, heeding the call by the Bank of Greece (BoG) for increasing their efforts to clear out their bad-loan stock.

In its report on monetary policy published on Monday, the Greek central bank noted that Alpha, Eurobank, National and Piraeus are on course to meet the target for cutting their NPEs to 43 percent of all loans by the end of this year and down to 35.2 percent by end-2019.

Next month banks are expected to show that they have met their targets for the first half of the year, but this has mainly been due to write-offs, as the portfolio sales have only recently started gathering pace, while loan restructurings and the liquidation of collateral through auctions have not yet reached the desired level.

Therefore, in the plans...

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