BDDK President Tevfik Bilgin announced statistics regarding the performance of the Turkish banking sector in 2009, stating the “most important figure of 2009” was profits, which reached TL 20.08 billion, surpassing the agency’s predicted TL 20 billion and up 49.6 percent from 2008’s TL 13.4 billion.
The Turkish banking sector passed the difficult test of 2009 with flying colors without any bailouts, while global banks suffered with toxic assets and securities, with governments rushing to prop up the “too big to fail” institutions with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds.
In 2009, banks increased their total assets by 14 percent, to reach TL 834 billion by the end of the year. Bilgin noted that in 2009, participation banks, financial institutions that offer Islamic banking products, increased their total assets by 30.5 percent, state banks by 20.5 and private banks by 11.9 percent. Criticism that banks held back on giving much-needed loans in 2009 seemed to be, on average, unfounded as banks increased their total amount of loans by 6 percent compared to 2008, climbing to TL 393 billion. When looking at loans extended by type of bank, Bilgin revealed that although on average loans increased, private banks actually decreased the amount of loans given by 0.4 percent, while state banks and participation banks increased the amount of credit by 19.3 and 34 percent, respectively.
Bilgin did note, however, the share of loans in the banks’ asset portfolio decreased to 47.1 percent in 2009, down from 53 percent one-and-a-half years ago, signaling that although a decrease in loans did not occur, banks still shied away from them in favor of other assets.
The banking sector did experience some difficulty, however, as Bilgin stated that non-performing loans increased by a staggering 55.5 percent during the crisis year, hitting TL 22 billion, up from TL 14 billion in 2008.
