National banks in the UAE have increased their credit financing provided to the business and industrial sectors by 40.6 billion dirhams ($10.8 billion) or 5.8%, as of the end of April 2023.
The Central Bank of the UAE has released the latest data on credit financing, which show that national banks had provided 737.3 billion dirhams ($200.7 billion) in credit to the business and industrial sectors, compared to 696.7 billion dirhams ($189.6 billion) billion in April 2022.
The data also show that national banks increased their credit balance for the two sectors by 2.1 billion dirhams ($571 million) or 0.3% in April, up from 735.2 billion dirhams ($200.1 billion) in March.
National banks gave 90% of their accumulated credit balance of 818.9 billion dirhams ($222.9 billion) to the country’s business and industrial sectors by the end of April, while foreign banks only provided 10% or 81.6 billion dirhams ($22.2 billion).
By the end of April, banks in Abu Dhabi had provided 365.6 billion dirhams ($99.5 billion) in credit to these sectors, banks in Dubai provided 351.3 billion dirhams ($95.6 billion), and banks in other emirates offered 102 billion dirhams ($27.7 billion).
By the end of April, the business and industrial sectors received credit financing mostly from traditional banks, which provided 675.5 billion dirhams ($183.8 billion) or 82.5% of the total, while Islamic banks contributed 143.4 billion dirhams ($39 billion) or 17.5%.
From January to June this year, institutional investors bought more local stocks than they sold in the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and the Dubai Financial Market (DFM).
Their net purchases totaled 5.6 billion dirhams ($1.5 billion) after buying stocks worth 165.4 billion dirhams ($45 billion) and selling 159.7 billion dirhams ($43.3 billion) in stocks.
Emirati markets are actively adopting strategies to attract more foreign and institutional investments while diversifying liquidity sources between domestic and foreign investors and institutional and individual participants.
Institutional investments accounted for some 78% of the total trading volume, both buying and selling, in both markets since the start of the current year, while individual investments constituted around 22%.
In detail, institutions invested more than 5 billion dirhams ($1.3 billion) in the ADX, resulting from purchases totaling 143.4 billion dirhams ($39 billion) compared to sales of around 138.4 billion dirhams ($37.6 billion).
In the DFM, the net total of institutional investments was 613 million dirhams ($166.8 million) since the start of the current year, with purchases totaling 22 billion dirhams ($5.9 billion) and sales at around 21.4 billion dirhams ($5.8 billion).
