BRASILIA: A broad measure of Brazilian consumer and business default ratios held steady in February at a multi-year low of 2.9%, while bank lending spreads narrowed to 22.9 percentage points from 23.5 pp in January, the central bank said on Monday.

The amount of outstanding loans in Brazil rose 0.7% in the month to 4 trillion reais ($693 billion) and over the last 12 months loan growth accelerated 16.1%, the central bank said.