This made the Philippines one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia in the first nine months last year. At the same time, the country’s sound, stable and liquid banking system provided solid support to our economy in 2015, with bank lending continuing to grow in double-digit rates, with credit flowing particularly to the productive sectors.
And as a result of the continuing cooperation between the BSP and the banking sector to continue to enhance governance and risk management practices of banks, industry profitability improved further with return on equity rising from 9.67% in September 2014 to 10.04% in September 2015; asset quality got even better with gross NPL ratio improving to 2.32% in September 2015 from 2.56% in September 2014; while deposits reached record-high levels, increasing by over 9% year-on-year to nearly P 8.8 trillion as of September 2015.