In 2022, Tunisian banks continued their efforts to control additional flows of classified loans and clean up their balance sheets, despite the difficult economic climate, according to the 2022 Annual Report on Banking Supervision.
The share of classified loans stood at 12.6% at the end of 2022, compared with 13.1% in 2021 and 13.5% in 2020.
This improvement, according to the Central Bank of Tunisia’s (BCT) report, can be explained by the balance sheet clean-up operations carried out by the banks of fully impaired loans for a total amount of 1 billion dinars in the form of write-offs of current loans.
This improvement in the overall share should not hide the continued high share of classified loans to private companies (17.1%) and SMEs (25.2%), as well as the worsening of the default rate for individuals, which rose from 7.1% at the end of 2020 to 7.8% at the end of 2022.
The sectoral breakdown of classified loans shows, as in previous years, a concentration on the industry, tourism and trade sectors, which account for 63.1% of outstanding classified loans.
Together, these three sectors account for 53.2% of the banking sector’s commitments.
Tourism, agriculture and property development had the highest shares of classified loans, at 30.2%, 24.3% and 21.5% respectively. However, the total share of these sectors remains relatively low at only 11%.
