The banks and Guyanese consumers market

Loan Portfolio

The most recent quarterly statistics from the Bank of Guyana show a mixed picture of the lending patterns of the commercial banks in Guyana.  Two years ago, the three foreign-owned banks operating in Guyana saw value in doing business with Guyanese households and had consumer lending as against business lending as a substantial part of their loan portfolio.  The report that covers the quarter ended in September 2010 revealed that the banking sector in Guyana made about 16 percent of its loan portfolio available to Guyanese consumers, even though the disposition in lending varied widely among banks.  The contrast between the foreign and local banks was stark and revealed differing approaches to utilizing deposits of customers and the strategy for generating future growth in the industry.  In the third quarter of 2010, the foreign banks had given an average of 24 percent of their loans to Guyanese households while the local banks had given an average of eight percent.  As of September 2012, that pattern had not changed much and the foreign banks as a whole had given 17 percent of their loans to households compared to six percent for the locally-owned banks.  The bank bucking the downward trend is Republic Bank which has been constantly growing this part of its loan portfolio.

Double-Digit Shares

In contrast to two years ago, only two of the three foreign-owned banks gave more than 10 percent of their loans to Guyanese families.  The biggest support for household financing had come from the Bank of Baroda, which had used 30 percent of