66 URUGUAY - CREDIT 



serve to show the importance of those transactions of the bank which are 

 concerned with land, and also what the bank has done to lessen the distur- 

 bance of the national economy of Uruguay due to local factors, and, even 

 more importantly, to the European conflagration which has profoundly 

 affected all credit transactions in the country. 



When we come to examine the increase in the operations in land credit 

 conducted by this institution, we find that during the year 1915-1916 the 

 bank made loans of a total value of 3,562,400 pesos (i) as against 2,032,700 

 pesos in the preceding year, which gives an increase of 1,529,700 ])esos or 

 75 per cent. This increase is yet more conspicuous if it be remembered that 

 in the year 1914-1915 the requests for rural loans received by the bank 

 from individuals were for a total amount of 5,140,400 pesos and the amount 

 lent was, as has been said, 2,032,700 pesos, while in the year 1915-1916 the 

 total requests were for 8,404,100 pesos and the sums lent amounted 

 to 3,562,400 pesos. Thus in 1914-1915 the loans actually made repre- 

 sented 39 per cent, of those for which application was made, and in 19*5- 

 1916 42 per cent., a circumstance which proves that the increase in the 

 loans granted last year, as compared with those granted in the preceding 

 year, was due not to greater willingness to accord them but to a greater 

 demand for them. 



During the year under review the bank granted 157 loans secured by 

 rural mortgages. The average sum lent was 21.62 pesos a hectare (2), 

 and the average annual interest on mortgages was 1.73 pesos. These aver- 

 ages calculated on the hectare, and corresponding to the value of the mort- 

 gaged properties as fixed by the bank's experts and to their annual returns, 

 were 49.29 pesos and 1.99 pesos. 



The following table gives detailed data with regard to the mort- 

 gages reaHzed by the bank in the nineteen departments of the repubhc of 

 Uruguay. 



(i) Peso = about 4s 3d at par. 



(2) I hectare = 2 acres i rood 35.383 poles. 



