Belize’s 2016–17 Sovereign Debt Restructuring – Third Time Lucky?

This paper examines the causes, process, and outcome of Belize’s 2016–17 sovereign debt restructuring – its third episode in last 10 years. As was the case in the earlier two restructurings, in 2006–07 and in 2012–13, the 2016–17 debt restructuring was executed through collaborative engagement with creditors outside an IMF-supported program. While providing liquidity relief and partially addressing long-term debt sustainability concerns, the restructuring will need to be underpinned by ambitious fiscal consolidation and growth-enhancing structural reforms to secure durable gains and avoid future debt distress situations.

Causal Analysis Between Liquidity and Profitability: Is There Any Difference Between Public and Private Commercial Banks in Bangladesh?

This paper analyzes the causal relationship between liquidity and profitability for public and private commercial banks in Bangladesh. The augmented Dickey-Fuller test of stationarity is carried out first. As they are found to be integrated of the same order, the Engle-Granger test of cointegration is applied. Finally, the Granger causality test is applied to check if there is any causal relationship between liquidity and profitability for public and private commercial banks in Bangladesh from 2001 to 2019. Another aim of the paper is to see if there is any difference in the causal relationship between these two bank typologies. The results show that there is unidirectional causality from profitability to liquidity for public banks while no causal relationship is evident for private commercial banks in Bangladesh. The findings further confirm that different bank typologies behave differently in Bangladesh and hence policy makers should keep this in mind during policy formulation.

GDP growth as a bank loan quality determinant

Past financial crises and recessions have revealed the importance of the economy’s condition for the loan quality. Macroeconomic determinants of the non-performing loans have been attracting considerable attention in recent years. The aim of this paper is to organize and summarize studies examining the role of GDP growth and its impact on bank loan quality. This approach reveals the research problem which is to specify if there exists a statistically significant relationship between economic growth and the level of non-performing loans. It is equally important to determine the direction of this link. By appealing to common knowledge, the research hypothesis states that an increase in economic activity results in improving loan quality. To verify the hypothesis, the analysis of the relevant literature and the methods of verbal as well as tabular description have been applied. Empirical results on the link between the macroeconomic environment and the level of non-performing loans appear to be quite conclusive. It has been found that an economic expansion generally improves the loan quality. This broadly proven relationship is in line with many studies which confirm the borrowers’ increased willingness to repay debts in a favourable economic environment. Far less frequently, the macroeconomic activity leads to future bank losses. Additionally, some studies do not provide any statistically significant effect of GDP growth on the loan quality.

Condition of banks listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange during the first 3 months of the pandemic in Poland

The aim of the paper is to assess the condition of commercial banks listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange after the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. The consolidated results for Q1 and Q2 2020 were used focusing on selected evaluation areas such as: capital adequacy, profitability, liquidity, credit portfolio quality as well as operational efficiency. The authors concluded that as a result of the credit crunch and the retention of previously earned profits, almost every medium (except for mBank SA) and every large bank experienced an increase in capital adequacy ratios. Moreover, the profitability of the banking sector eroded in each group of banks, with the rule that ROE is higher in the group of medium and large banks compared to the small ones. With the exception of Idea Bank SA all banks during the pandemic experienced an improvement in liquidity ratios. There was reported an increase in the cost of risk, with the greatest augmentation in small banks. It is maintained that the larger the bank the lower cost of risk. In almost every institution, the risk is mitigated by an increase in the degree of coverage by provisions for impaired receivables. In small banks there was noticed a deterioration in operational efficiency. In medium and large banks, despite a sharp drop in profits and additional costs associated with the pandemic, the process of efficiency improvement was reinforced.

bKash vs. Bank-led Option: Factors Influencing Customer’s Preferences – Does it Warrant Voluntary-Insurance-Policy for Rapid-growth Digital-banking in Bangladesh-economy?

In today’s technology-driven world-economy, banking-services have been modernized where customers compete for comparative time-saving-options. Bangladesh, a developing country, is no exception. Besides traditional banking, Agent-banking, bKash, Western-Union etc. serve new-way financial-services. But, in 21st-Century business-mentality era, many factors are unpredictable. Strict laws & application can marginalize the magnitudes of Perceived-risk where developed countries are ahead of developing countries. But it does not guarantee risk-free digital-transaction where developing countries are vulnerable. It might have led a slower growth of digital-banking in countries like Bangladesh. Dealing with determinant Perceived-risk, current author proposed Voluntary-Insurance policy (Rahman, 2018) that deserves to be scrutinized. Using Factor Analysis and Hypothesis Testing on customers’ opinions helps identifying factors that have undermined the growth-trend of bank-led digital. Attributes “Phone call confirmation” has influenced customer’s preference using bKash. “No transaction fee” has influenced using bank-led digital. Addressing risk-factors, Voluntary-Insurance in place can ensure secured digital-banking that can enhance growth of usages digital-banking.

Reconciling Macroeconomic Determinants with Stock Market Performance in Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries: an ARDL Approach

Prior studies have adduced unstable macroeconomic factors to stock price movement overtime but the relationship between the duo remained unsettled. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique was used to reconcile the macroeconomic determinants with performance of stock markets in selected Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) covering the period of 1999:1–2017:4. It was found that macroeconomic indicators were essential in determining stock market performance in Nigeria while South African stock market did not show any predictable linkage but the contemporaneous effect of oil price changes on stock market performance in selected SSA. The study, therefore, recommended that countries in SSA should reduce overdependence on oil to minimize external influence in order to promote stability of the stock markets.

The Impact of Credit Risk on Bank Profitability in Nigeria

This study examines the impact credit risk management has on the profitability of commercial banks in Nigeria. The main objective of this material is to show how credit risk parameters are related to the expected performance of commercial banks in Nigeria. Using the regression analysis, relationship was drawn between credit risk parameters (which include capital adequacy ratio and non-performing loan ratio) and the profitability ratio (return on average asset, in particular) of five big Nigerian banks. Mixed research methodology was adopted in that primary data were sourced via questionnaires and secondary data were used via annual report of selected banks. Regression analysis was used to analyse the data. The conclusion drawn from the data analysis shows that there is a strong relationship between credit risk parameters and returns of the bank implying that credit risk management has a strong impact on the profitability of commercial banks in Nigeria. The study recommends that banks’ capital should be matched with their total risk exposure and if there is an imbalance, new capital requirements are necessary. Insider-related interests in loan applications should be closely monitored by the regulators to ensure continuous performance of the loan facility. Also, there should be an extant profiling of loan defaulters whether individuals or corporate entities.

The use of the bootstrap method for the assessment of investment effectiveness and risk – the case of confidence intervals estimation for the Sharpe ratio and TailVaR

This paper is aimed at presenting application of bootstrap interval estimation methods to the assessment of financial investment’s effectiveness and risk. At first, we give an overview of various methods of bootstrap confidence interval estimation, i.e. bootstrap-t interval, percentile interval and BCa interval. Then, bootstrap confidence interval estimation methods are used to estimate confidence intervals for the Sharpe ratio and TailVaR of the Warsaw Stock Exchange sectoral indices. The results show that the bootstrap confidence intervals of different types are quite similarly positioned for each of the analysed index and measure. Taking into the account the locations of confidence intervals for both the Sharpe ratio and TailVaR, the real estate sector tends to be the most advantageous from the investor’s viewpoint.