A round-up of today's other stories in brief

Lenders found to be willing to help customers deal with arrears

Irish lenders are willing to work with consumers to assist them in addressing their mortgage arrears problems, a report by the Central Bank has found, writes Suzanne Lynch.

Five of the State’s main lenders were inspected by the Central Bank to assess their compliance with the Code of Conduct on Mortgage Arrears. The inspection this year found that lenders were willing to enter into alternative mortgage repayment arrangements. Mortgage lenders were found to be in compliance with the required time frames before applying to the courts to commence enforcement of legal action on repossession of a property. The report found some shortcomings regarding the records maintained by mortgage lenders about advising consumers to take independent advice on arrangements and referrals to MABS, where appropriate.

Bloxham lowers growth forecast

Bloxham Stockbrokers has lowered its forecast for Irish economic growth next year. In its latest quarterly outlook, it predicts GDP will rise by 2.5 per cent and not 3.5 per cent as forecast previously.

"The Irish economic outlook remains clouded in uncertainty," its chief economist Alan McQuaid said.

"With the latest US economic indicators clearly showing that the world's largest economy is slowing down, this doesn't augur well for the economic picture here at home. Still, a strong export performance (particularly on the services side) helped by the depreciation of the euro against both the dollar and sterling in 2010, should see average Irish real GDP growth coming in at about 1 per cent this year."

Hotel group calls for tourism tsar

The Irish Hotels Federation has called for the appointment of a dedicated "tourism tsar" to lead Ireland's tourism marketing strategy in Britain, in order to address the "catastrophic decline" of British visitors here. According to the federation, visitor numbers from Britain are down 30 per cent since 2008.

It said the drop in British visitors had been twice that experienced by European competitors who had been more successful in retaining British market share.

This indicated an "abysmal failure" of the strategy for marketing Ireland to Britain.

Federation president Paul Gallagher said called on Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin to respond with a "sense of urgency".

China to tighten rules for its lenders

China's banking regulator may require its biggest lenders to boost their capital adequacy ratios to 15 per cent by the end of 2012. The plan would call for a tier 1 capital ratio of 8 per cent, with the overall capital adequacy ratio of 10 per cent.

China would also require an additional buffer of up to 4 per cent to protect lenders against economic fluctuations, plus a 1 per cent cushion for "systemically important" banks. The rules would be stricter than those of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision announced this week. – (Bloomberg)