The bad loans of banks continues to increase in 2016.

According to data released Tuesday by the Bank of Portugal, the financial institutions had 17,900 million in bad loans at the end of February, which represents an increase of around EUR 200 million compared to January .

This amount, which is the highest since November, is almost 9% of total loans granted by banks to businesses and households.

Non-financial companies were the main responsible for bad loans. The central bank data show that 15.91% of total loans to companies (12,900 million) was considered bad debt. In January, the figure was 15.53%.

As for individuals, the amount of doubtful loans amounted to five billion in February, representing 4.27% of the total funding to families. In January, the figure was 4.26%.

It was on housing loans which recorded the highest increase. In loans for house purchase, banks had 2540 million of difficult recovery.

A value representing 2.61% of the total money borrowed for this purpose and that is the highest percentage since the Bank of Portugal began publishing this data in 1997.

In consumer credit, 9.29% of total loans was considered bad debt at the end of February. A percentage which still reflects a decrease compared to 9.35% Registered one month before.

In terms of value, however, doubtful loans totaled 1.14 billion euros in February, up from 1,130 million euros in the previous month.

[Source]