The liquidity needs of the Spanish representative banks are less dependent on the funds offered by the European Central Bank (ECB). During the last month of December, 192,970 million euros were requested, numbers that represent a reduction of almost 30% and that we have not seen since May 2020.
According to the provisional data published this Friday by the Bank of Spain, the figures for December are also 33.3% lower than those corresponding to the same month of 2021, when requests from entities to the ECB stood at 289,545 million euros. .
In the entire euro area, requests for funds also fell in December, but they did so by 19.5%, almost ten points less than in Spain, to 1,638 trillion euros, from 2,035 trillion at the end of November. In this way, the banks of European countries are demonstrating degrees of independence that reflect signs of recovery after the pandemic.
Worst Capitalizations
Despite this reduction in needs in Spanish banking, the ECB has indicated that these entities have been the least solvent of all the countries that make up the euro area during the last quarter of 2022 if we take into account the levels of capital, although these were the seventh most profitable.
The ten Spanish banks that have been examined by this body showed a CET1 capital ratio of 12.48%, being three points below the data registered between July and September. In this way, countries such as Portugal, Greece and Austria surpassed the indices of Spain with 13.59%, 13.74% and 14.28% respectively.
The only bank that was behind the Spanish in this quarter is the Maltese, which obtained a negative return of -1.36%. In terms of profitability, Spanish banks examined a return on capital of 10.53%, rising 20 basis points during the last months of last year.
