SEOUL: Foreign-currency loans extended by South Korean banks inched down in the first half of 2015 from six months earlier on a decline in yen-denominated loans, the financial watchdog said Wednesday.
The outstanding amount of foreign currency loans by banks reached a combined US$22.12 billion as of the end of June, compared with $22.54 billion six months earlier, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).
Japanese currency-denominated loans fell 23.7 percent to $3.79 billion from $4.97 billion over the six-month period as a weaker yen drove borrowers to repay such loans or refinance them with won-denominated ones, the FSS said.
However, dollar-denominated loans increased 4.4 percent to $18.02 billion over the cited period, as local companies took out more loans to pay bills for crude oil imports, added the FSS.
The lending rate on dollar loans dropped 0.08 percentage point from the end of December to 2.63 percent as of end-June, with that on yen loans also falling 0.1 percentage point to 2.81 percent over the cited period.
The delinquency rate of foreign currency-denominated loans came in at 0.86 percent at the end of June, up 0.21 percentage point from end-December, the watchdog said.
