YEREVAN, November 9. /ARKA/. Armenian banks increased their reserves for possible loan losses by 17.7% in the first 9 months of 2017 to 177.3 billion drams, according to ARKA news agency’s bulletin ‘Banks of Armenia" for the third quarter of 2017.

When compared to the second quarter, the reserves were up by 6 billion drams or 5.4%. At the same time, the share of reserves in the banks’ loan portfolios in the third quarter increased from 4.28% to 4.76%.
The leading five banks by size of reserves were VTB Bank (Armenia), HSBC Bank Armenia, ACBA-CREDIT AGRICOLE BANK, Ameriabank and Ardshinbank.

The reserves of VTB Bank (Armenia) stood at 29.6 billion drams at the end of September, having increased by 34.73% since the beginning of the year, and by 4.43% from the previous quarter. The share of the reserves in the bank’s loan portfolio was 21.38%

HSBC Bank Armenia’s reserves totaled 15.8 billion drams (an increase of 37.5% and 25.8% respectively), those of ACBA-CREDIT AGRICOLE BANK stood at 15.7 billion drams (6.9% and 5% decline respectively), Ameriabank’s reserves increased by 21.37% and 6.9% respectively to 10.48 billion drams and those of Ardshinbank grew to 7.4 billion drams (an increase of 29.7% and 4% respectively).

It should be noted that the banks’ overall lending as of the end of September totaled 2.465.8 trillion drams, down 3.54% from the beginning of the year. -0-