BRASILIA/SAO PAULO: Loans in arrears for 90 days or more in Brazil remained at a record high for a third straight month in October, a sign that steps by commercial banks to refinance looming debt maturities are preventing the country's worst credit crunch in two decades from worsening further.

The so-called default ratio, a benchmark for delinquencies, came in at the equivalent of 5.9 percent of outstanding non-earmarked loans, unaltered from September, the central bank said on Thursday. Stable defaults came as lending fell 0.5 percent in October, to 3.095 trillion reais ($909 billion), the report showed.

Copyright Reuters, 2016