Determinants of Non Performing Loans: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Abstract

In the recent past, the global financial crisis and the subsequent recession in many developed countries have increased households’ and firms’ defaults, causing significant losses to the banks. Case of Sri Lanka is no difference. The changes in the economic conditions are believed to have a critical role to play in determining the level of nonperforming loans. Regulators all over the world have started to pay more attention to the credit quality of the Banks and strengthened the regulatory frameworks. This paper attempts to study the macroeconomic determinants of banks’ loan quality in Sri Lanka by analyzing secondary data over the period 1998–2014. The methodology to be adopted for the study was arrived at upon careful review of the literature and following the empirical studies conducted on the determinants of the nonperforming loans. The finding of the analysis is that, out of the six determinants, GDP growth rate and the Export Growth are significant in determining the level of the NPLs in the Sri Lankan banking sector. The relationship of the GDP with the NPL is found to be positive which is not consistent with the majority of the empirical findings Keywords-