The banking industry’s Non-Performing Loans (NPL) ratio reduced to 23.6% in April 2025, from 25.7% in April 2024, the Bank of Ghana has revealed in its May 2025 Banking sector Development Report.

When adjusted for the fully provisioned loan loss category, it declined to 9.0% in April 2025 from 11.1% in April 2024.

The decrease in the NPL ratio was attributable to the higher growth in total loans relative to the growth in NPL stock.

The industry’s NPL stock grew by 8.7% to GH¢21.7 billion in April 2025, up from GH¢20.0 billion in April 2024.

Decomposition of the NPL stock indicated that the private sector accounted for the larger share of non-performing loans, in line with its larger share of industry credit.

The proportion of NPLs attributable to the private sector picked up to 93.4% in April 2025, from 91.0% in April 2024, while that of the public sector decreased to 6.6% in April 2025, from 9.0% in a similar period 2024.

The agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector recorded the highest NPL ratio of 62.1%, up from 58.7% in April 2024.

This was followed by the transportation, storage, and communications sector with 53.9% in April 2025 (representing a pickup from 49.0% in 2024).

The NPL ratio of the construction sector, however, recorded the largest improvement from 41.3% in 2024 to 30.3% in April 2025 to round up the top three sectoral NPL ratios.

The mining and quarrying sector accounted for the lowest NPL ratio of 9.8%, also improving from 14.4% in April 2024.

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