Persistently low oil prices continue to pressure the funding environment for banks across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, says Moody’s Investors Service in a report published today.
Moody’s report, entitled “Banks – Gulf Cooperation Council: Persistently Low Oil Prices Challenge Regional Liquidity Conditions” is available on www.moodys.com. The rating agency’s report is an update to the markets and does not constitute a rating action.
The impact of low oil prices on GCC banks’ stand-alone profiles has so far been most accute in terms of more challenging liquidity conditions, reflecting increasing government borrowings, reduced deposit inflows and rising interest rates.
“Lower oil revenues are driving tightening of liquidity in the GCC, with overall deposit growth slowing down significantly to around 3% in 2015 from around 10% in 2014,” says Nitish Bhojnagarwala, an Assistant Vice President at Moody’s and author of the report. “Moreover, liquid asset buffers are broadly expected to decline by around 20% across the region over 2016” he adds.
Although liquid asset buffers remain sound at around 20%-25% of total assets, these trends are driving up market funding levels of domestic banks, increasing their overall cost of funds and dampening profitability.
“While credit growth has slowed in the region due to lower GDP growth combined with falling business and consumer confidence, impact on loan performance so far has been limited and capital buffers remain robust,” adds Nitish.
The report also highlights that GCC governments are increasingly financing their fiscal deficits through the banks.”The banking system exposure to their respective sovereigns is increasing, such lending is broadly supportive of bank solvency profiles given the high credit quality and higher yields associated with the new longer term borrowing” says Khalid F. Howladar, a Senior Vice President at Moody’s.”However, such borrowing can reduce the availability of bank credit to the private sector and increase concentration” he adds.
Moody’s notes these pressures vary across the region and when combined with the pressures stemming from strong sovereign linkages (as highlighted in the paper published on the 22 February “GCC Banks: Low Oil Prices Challenge Banks’ Resilience”) drove our recent action to downgrade majority of banks in Oman and Bahrain and place the ratings of 31 banks under review for downgrade in all six countries on March 7 2016.