Since last autumn, the Bank has taken a number of measures in view of the substantial deterioration in  BIS Review 94/2009  7  economic conditions and tight financial conditions. I will refer here only to the most important ones. First, there have been policy interest rate reductions.
In the first six months of this year, the flow of new NPLs returned to the levels of 2008, at around 3 per cent of outstanding loans. Provisional data on the third quarter show that the improvement is continuing. Moreover, the NPL coverage ratios continue to grow and are now slightly above the average for the main European banks.