Philippines' bad loans down in November

MANILA, Feb. 2 (Chinese media) -- The ratio of bad loans in the Philippines declined in November last year, allowing commercial banks to record the lowest rate in non-performing loans (NPL) since the 1997 Asian crisis, the country's central bank said on Monday.

Data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that the NPL ratio of universal and commercial banks fell 0.19 percentage point to 3.78 percent from 3.97 percent in October 2008.

It was also down 1.21 percentage points from 4.99 percent in November 2007.

The central bank said the improvement on the NPL ratio was a result of the 4.77 percent expansion of the total loans portfolio (TLP) of universal and commercial banks.

"NPLs dropped to 93.32 billion pesos (1.95 billion U.S. dollars) from last month's (October's) 93.58 billion pesos (1.96 billion U.S. dollars) while TLP grew to 2,470.18 billion pesos (51.70 billion U.S. dollars) from 2,357.77 billion pesos (49.35 billion U.S. dollars)," the BSP said.