Vienna - Western governments should help their banks operating in Eastern Europe to deal with the economic and financial crisis, the head of the Banking Association for Central and Eastern Europe, Istvan Lengyel. said Thursday.

The current problems with liquidity and non-performing loans had "cascaded" down from Western banks which control some 95 per cent of the region's banking system, Lengyel told reporters at a conference of Eastern European bankers in Vienna.

"As you may have seen, the banks alone are insufficient to take care of these problems," said Lengyel, whose group includes 52 banks in the region.

As gross domestic product (GDP), exports and employment figures are expected to fall even further, the banker said that the share of non-performing loans would likely rise.

So far, the Italian-based UniCredit group and its subsidiary Bank Austria have announced they would seek up to 4 billion euros (5.2 billion dollars) of capital from governments in Rome and Vienna, which would partly be used for their Eastern European operations. (dpa)