Elisa Ferreira was speaking at the opening of a meeting on banking in Lisbon. She said the banks had made progress in recent years with more sustained funding, better financial margins and what she called “increased potential in operating efficiency” because of restructuring programmes the banks are implementing such as cutting costs, particularly with workers, which, in the future, should lead to higher operating efficiency.
However, she said, the Portuguese banks’ return on equity was worse than other European banks, which she blamed mainly on the fact that Portuguese banks had to record significant impairments to cover their non-performing loans.
“Although the level is still very high, it has been coming down”, she added.