Banks wrote off GH¢1.64 billion in 2025, NPL stock hits GH¢21.0 billion – BoG

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Banks in Ghana wrote off GH¢1.64 billion in 2025, a reduction of 57.1% over the previous year.According to the Domestic Money Banks Income Statement by the Bank of Ghana, the banks made a provision of GH¢3.82 billion as bad debt in 2024.The total provision was made for loan losses, depreciation & others.According to the January 2026 Banking Developments Report, the asset quality risks of banks remained elevated in December 2025, although the industry’s Non-Performing Loans (NPL) ratio declined to 18.9% in December 2025, from 21.8% in December 2024.Similarly, the NPL ratio adjusted for the fully provisioned loan loss category declined from 8.5% to 5.0% during the same comparative period.The NPL stock, however, increased by 0.8% to GH¢21.0 billion in December 2025 compared with a growth of 31.4% recorded in December 2024.The decomposition of the NPL showed that the private sector accounted for the most non-performing loans, due to its dominant holdings in total credit. The proportion of NPLs attributable to the private sector increased to 97.5% in December 2025, from 96.2% in December 2024, while that of the public sector declined to 2.5%, from 3.8% a year earlier.According to the Bank of Ghana, the decline in the industry NPL ratio year-on-year reflected improvements in asset quality across all but two sectors during the review period. Accordingly, the NPL ratios in the construction, and agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors increased from 29.8% and 38.0% to 30.7% and 46.3%, respectively.All other sectors recorded improvements in asset quality during the review period.