Loans from universal and commercial banks for household consumption grew by 26.7 percent in October from 26.2 percent in September, due to faster growth in motor vehicle, credit card, and salary-based general purpose consumption loans during the month.
Meanwhile, loans for production activities–which comprised 87.2 percent of banks’ aggregate loan portfolio, net of RRPs–expanded at a rate of 7.5 percent in October, lower than the reported growth in September at 9.0 percent.
The sustained increase in production loans was driven primarily by lending to the following sectors: real estate activities; financial and insurance activities; construction; electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply; and wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycle.
Bank lending to other sectors also increased during the month, except those in professional, scientific and technical activities (-28.0 percent) and other community, social and personal activities (-34.4 percent).
Notwithstanding the expansion in credit across sectors, growth in outstanding loans of universal and commercial banks, net of reverse repurchase (RRP) placements with the BSP, was slower at 9.3 percent in October, from 10.5 percent in the previous month.
On a month-on-month seasonally-adjusted basis, commercial bank loans net of RRPs grew by 0.3 percent.
