Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Cure for lending constipation needed
Yes, the market for IPOs is opening up, investors are regaining confidence and the worst seems to be over, but challenges are still looming and there’s a dire need for a change in regulation. Or so suggested Shuaa Capitals’ chief Sameer al-Ansari.
“With the balance sheet of banks, whatever is keeping them constipated, we need to give them something to start. Banks have to be more comfortable and confident that there are no more shocks on the horizon,” said Ansari at the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit in Dubai on Tuesday.
The right provisions need to be made — and that means more acknowledgment of non-performing loans — in turn bringing adequacy ratios down, so that banks get a boost and start lending again, Ansari noted.
“We need to open the tap a bit, even if its a drip,” the banking exec said, using hand gestures to illustrate his point. “We can’t have growth in the economy if its negative.”
Ansari, who’d made recommendations – simple to drastic – to decision makers in Dubai, suggesting solutions, cited the Irish example of gathering all bad debts linked to real estate and placing them in a government bank.
“It should be looked at here. If that’s what’s making the banks constipated, then lets do it!” he says.
Dubai, one of seven emirates that make-up the UAE federation, was hard hit by the global financial downturn and endured billions of dollars in projects cancellations, not to mention the $25 billion debt restructuring of Dubai World.
