Spain banks' bad loans at 13-yr high in Oct - central bank

MADRID Dec 18 (Reuters) - Spanish banks' bad loans rose in October to their highest level in 13 years as the country's property sector-fuelled recession further hit borrowers' ability to service their debts, Bank of Spain data showed on Friday.

The volume of bad debts grew by 1.8 billion euros ($2.6 billion) to 86.535 billion in October, the central bank said.

Bad loans increased to 4.89 percent of total outstanding debt excluding retail credit card borrowing for creditors in October, compared to 4.75 percent in September.

Total lending fell by 11.24 billion euros to 1.77 trillion. (Reporting by Jesus Aguado; writing by Nigel Davies, editing by Mike Peacock)