Loans to the economy grew by 4.3% in July 2020, compared to 6.2% a year earlier, taking advantage of measures taken by the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT) since March 2020 against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Bank said in its note on economic and monetary developments October 2020.
The BCT recalled that these measures included lowering the key interest by 100 basis points in March and more recently at the end of September by 50 basis points, the provision of liquidity to banks (institution of a 1-month refinancing line-COVID 19).
It also involves the BCT’s collateral policy (rebalancing the ratio of marketable securities and non-marketable claims to 50%).
“All of these actions have favored a transmission of the decrease in the key rate to the bank lending rates applied to new loans, granted to both private companies and individuals, which have dropped significantly”.
By main beneficiary, the BCT noted that the pace of growth of loans to professionals has accelerated for medium-long-term loans (+ 10.1% year-on-year, against an increase of +8.3% in June 2020), driven by the significant increase in loans granted to the public administration (+99.8%).
Conversely, short-term loans continued to slowdown (+0.7% versus +2.9%).
As for loans to individuals, the pace of growth accelerated in July 2020 (+3.4% vs. +2.6%), reflecting the continued increase in both housing loans and consumer loans.
