In the latest report published on the Central Bank of Iran's official website, which contains data useful to monetary policymakers and analysts, the bank has put the number of loan applicants during the aforementioned eight months at 5.57 million, out of whom 600,000 applicants have received their loans during the month ending Nov. 21.
According to the CBI report, the services sector grabbed the lion’s share of the bank loans both in terms of number and volume.
More than 3.2 million applicants in the sector received loans worth more than 1.4 quadrillion rials ($34.1 billion) during the period, accounting for 40% of all the offered credits, Financial Tribune reported.
The next major recipient of credits was the industrial and mining sector, followed by the business sector. The former with 1.06 quadrillion rials ($25.3 billion) and the latter with 507.8 trillion rials ($12.09 billion) accounted for 33.2% and 12.4% of the total loans, respectively.
This is while agriculture and housing sectors respectively bagged the smallest share of banks’ loans during the aforementioned period.
Housing sector, which has not yet fully recovered from its long-lasting slump, managed to bag 304.2 trillion rials ($7.24 billion) worth of loans, which were divided among more than 612,000 applicants.
Iran’s key sector accounted for only 8.5% of all the loans paid out by the banking system during the eight-month period, which is considerably low, considering the size and value of the sector.
Sectoral Share
Despite the fact that after the services sector, applicants of agriculture sector received the most number of loans during the eight-month period, the collective value of their loans only reached 261.8 trillion rials ($6.23 billion) which is the smallest piece of the banking system’s loan cake.
The banking system has to walk a fine line between channeling their resources toward productive sectors and not cause inflationary pressure.
As the report indicates, the share of working capital loans for all economic sectors in the period stood at 2.23 quadrillion rials ($53.1 billion), which account for 62.5% of all loans during the period.
The share of working capital loans to stimulate industries and mines was 898.6 trillion rials ($21.39 billion), which equals 39.7% of all the credits extended to meet the working capital needs of businesses and 84.4% of all the credits the sector managed to collect.
After industries and mines, services sector pocketed the most volume of working capital loans, grabbing 729.4 trillion rials ($17.36 billion) or 34.1% of the entire working capital loans.
During the first eight months of the current fiscal to Nov.21, the services sector allocated more than half of its credits to meet working capital needs.
The report further shows that the average value of each loan that went to the industrial and mining sector was considerably higher than the other sectors, standing at 6.03 billion rials ($143,500). However, the average value of their loans has significantly declined during the past few months, as it stood at 10.5 billion rials ($250,000) in May 2017.
The figure for trade loans, which had the second highest average value, was around 843 million rials ($20,000) while loans allocated to agriculture sector were the lowest at 290 million rials ($7,000) during the first month of the current Iranian year (started March 21).