NICOSIA, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- Cyprus recorded the largest decrease among EU countries in Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) between June 2017 and June 2018, the European Banking Authority (EBA) said in a report Saturday.

It said Cyprus brought down non-performing loans by 8.6 percent, followed by Portugal with 5 percent and Ireland with 4.8 percent.

All three countries have been through economic and banking crises which made it impossible for a large ratio of borrowers to repay their debts.

Cyprus was bailed out by the Eurogroup and the international Monetary Fund in March 2013 with a 10-billion euro assistance package which provided for harsh austerity measures and a resolution of its banking system.

The EBA report also said that Cyprus was fifth in the highest loan sales to address the NPLs problem, having sold 3 billion euros of red loans.

Cyprus made a decisive step to further reduce NPLs by introducing a plan to help low income borrowers repay their debts secured with their residence by subsidizing their bank installments by one-third.

The plan could help turn 3.5 billion euros, or 17 percent, of bad loans into serviced facilities.

The plan, called house, was promoted through the state budget for next year, which provides for an expenditure of 33 million euros to be used to help borrowers. The expenditure will be repeated for the next 25 years.

Cyprus' parliament on Friday blocked the expenditure temporarily, until the government provides details and improves the plan.

Finance Minister Haris Georgiades said on Saturday that he is confident that the expenditure will be released early in 2019, as all parties support the plan even though they want to make some changes to it.

The EBA report said that EU banks have considerable exposures to non-EU countries. Within the EU, more than 60 percent of these exposures was held by banks in the UK and Spain.

The main exposure of the Cypriot banking sector is towards Russia. Enditem

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