ATHENS — The Greek banks' stock of non-performing loans will fall to single-digit rate in 2022, Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said on Wednesday. "The correct, serious and methodical work done in the last two years, under the coordination of the former deputy Finance Minister George Zavvos, continues," the FinMin said in an announcement, adding that: "According to Bank of Greece data, Greek banks' NPLs totaled 29.4 billion euros in June 2021, 20.3 pct of total loans, recording an impressive decline during the last two years.

The stock of NPLs has fallen by around 46 billion euros since New Democracy took over the government of the country (it was 75.3 billion euros in June 2019) and around 78 billion down from the peak in March 2016 (107.2 billion euros).

This significant reduction is the result of an integrated and coherent strategy followed by the finance ministry through the successful programme "Hercules" which has been expanded, and specific interventions implemented to contain the creation of a new wave of non-perfoming loans because of the pandemic crisis," the announcement said.