MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's BPER could lower its soured debts faster than expected this year, cutting their share in terms of total lending below 14 percent from 19.8 percent at the end of 2017, a financial source said.

Italy's sixth-largest bank said in February it would cut its soured loan ratio below 15 percent in 2018. But the source said an improvement partly driven by higher debt recoveries made it confident it could do better than planned.

BPER is working to offload some 3 billion euros (2.63 billion pounds) in bad debts repackaged as securities this year, after announcing it would book 1 billion euros in writedowns in connection with the coming into force in January of the new 'IFRS9' accounting rule.

(Reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Paola Arosio)