The growth pace of the Bulgarian banking sector has slowed down by 24.1 percentage points to 33.6% in the five months to August 2008, showed central bank data.
With lending flagging in terms of growth pace and volumes, plus banks launching juicier deposit offers, profits are dipping in spite of the good margins.
The slower pace, however, did not hold back the sector on the road to bigger volumes and local lenders racked up an increase of BGN 250 million to BGN 944 million for January-August compared to a year ago.
Banking assets rose by 36.6% year-on-year in August versus a speedier 39.2% and 37.9% for the two previous months reaching BGN 69.1 billion, picking up BGN 2.2 billion on the month. Medium and small banks were the biggest contributors to the burgeoning monthly growth.
Attracted resources grew 3.3% month-on-month to BGN 60.9 billion, with households and individuals speaking for BGN 21.9 billion of the total, up BGN 563 million from July.
Corporate deposits added BGN 333 million reaching BGN 20.9 billion.
Loans to households and individuals calmed down to 49.1% against 62.1% at the end of last year adding up to BGN 47.2 billion in end-August.
Corporate loans picked up 2.4% to BGN 30.8 billion, while retail exposures edged up 1.8% to BGN 16.3 billion.
Bankers forecast that the raging financial storm will further cool down sizzling lending although volumes have nowhere to go but up.
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