Bulgaria Sees Growth of Household Savings, Non-Performing Loans

The savings of the Bulgarian households reached BGN 25.5 B in June 2010, which is a year-on-year increase of 13.4%.

According to latest data of the Bulgarian National Bank, the household deposits grew by BGN 218 M in June compared with the previous month.

Experts have attributed the increase of the savings to the fact that most Bulgarians are still afraid to spend, and are restricting their consumption.

The company deposits in Bulgaria dropped by 1.3% in June year-on-year, down to BGN 12.05 B. The deposits of finance companies, however, are up by 5.7% at the end of June compared with June 2009, reaching BGN 3.23 B.

BNB data has also shown an increase of the share of non-performing loans, which have reached 15.11% of the total amount of credits in June 2010.

Yet, their increase has slowed down substantially. In June, they grew by BGN 198 M up to BGN 5.866 B; in the previous month their growth amounted to BGN 371 M, while in April it was BGN 424 M.

Thus, 15.6% of the consumer credits are registered as non-performing loans in June, up from 15.16% in May. 15.44% of the business credits and 15.47% of the mortgages are also non-performing.