BEIRUT: Retail and personal loans in Lebanon valued over $17 billion at the end of 2015, up 3.25 percent from a year earlier, a leading banker said Thursday.
“Personal loans have grown by 3.25 percent since the beginning of 2015 and reached $17.11 billion. This was due to an increase in the value of housing loans by 5.29 percent that reached $10.4 billion and an increase in the value of consumer loans by 3.62 percent to reach $4.6 billion,” said Joseph Torbey, president of the Association of Banks in Lebanon and head of the World Union of Arab Bankers, in remarks at the Arab Retail Banking conference in Beirut.
Citing Central Bank statistics based on the consolidated balance sheets of Lebanese banks, Torbey said personal loans represented 30.7 percent of total loans granted by the Lebanese financial sector since the beginning of 2015.
He added that housing loans represented 61 percent of these personal loans, followed by 27 percent for consumer loans, 8 percent for car loans, 3 percent for credit cards and 1 percent for student loans.
But Torbey stressed that many adults around the world do not have access to the banking services.
He pointed to a World Bank study which showed that 38 percent of adults worldwide – some two billion people – are still outside the banking system, and the majority of them are in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
Torbey noted that 75 percent of the poor around the world do not deal with banks due to high costs and long distances.
He added that the situation in the Arab world is even more complicated, emphasizing that the Arab countries are plagued with poverty and high unemployment. In his view, the absence of banking services to the poor in the region has contributed to the spread of terrorism, extremism and indignation in the society.
Torbey called on Arab banks to examine these facts and take the initiative to help alleviate suffering and restore hope to these people.
Here, he underscored the role of financial inclusion in the Arab world. Financial inclusion or inclusive financing is the delivery of financial services at affordable costs to sections of disadvantaged and low-income segments of society, in contrast to financial exclusion where those services are not available or affordable.
