Companies and consumers’ deposits ended 2017 with about 10% increase, double the growth rate of the loans. Savings started increasing in the second half of last year despite the decline in the interests paid by banks, which dropped to less than 1% on average, while the appetite for spending was rather high.
The banks on the Romanian market had to rely on local funding sources in the past few years, as they lost some of their lines of credit from their parent banks. Lenders have so far relied mainly on resources attracted from individual customers, which are more reliable and increased quite a lot during the crisis, as people were rather reluctant to spend.
Consumers’ leu and foreign currency savings kept in banks amount to RON178.2 billion or almost 60% of all bank deposits.
The annual growth pace of total private lending stood at 4.6% in 2017. Despite being slower than the deposits’, last year’s average growth was the highest in five years.
Total private lending to consumers and companies went up 5.6% in 2017 (December to December). (EUR1=RON4.6679)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)