Latest Fitch data shows some significant progress achieved by Ireland in dealing with non-performing loans on banks' balancesheets:
According to Fitch, Irish banking system ranked 6th worst in terms of NPLs in the EU at the end of 2016. This is a significant improvement on second and third places for Ireland during the height of the Greek and Cypriot crisis. However, the above data requires some serious caveats:
- Ireland has been the earlier starter in the game of repairing banks' balancesheets than any other country in the Fitch's Top10 Worst systems table above;
- Ireland's performance crucially depends on the assumed quality of mortgages debt restructurings undertaken by the banks over recent years - an assumption that is hardly un-contestable, given that the vast majority of mortgages arrears resolutions involve extend and pretend types of measures, such as extending mortgages maturity, rolling up arrears into a new (for now cheaper) debt and so on; and
- Ireland is compared here to a number of countries where the banks bailouts have either been much shallower or completely absent.
Still, for all the caveats, it is good to see that after 9 years of a crisis, Irish banking system is no longer in top-5 basket cases league table in Europe. At this speed, by 2026, me might be even outside the top-10 table...
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