June 23 (SeeNews) - Credit growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to accelerate, reaching its fastest annual pace since June 2014, the Croatian unit of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBA) said on Friday.
The amount of outstanding loans in the system expanded 4.3% on the year to 17.67 billion marka ($10.1 billion/9 billion euro) as of April 2017, on the back of the retail and corporate sectors, RBA said in its weekly CEE publication.
Consumer loans grew at a healthy 4.9% year-on-year – the strongest gain since November 2015 – to 8.26 billion marka, or 46.7% of the total.
Loans to the corporate sector reached their peak growth since November 2011, increasing by 5.0% year-on-year to 8.31 billion marka, or 47.0% of the total loan book.
Gross bank deposits also posted dynamic growth in April. Despite a small slowdown compared to March, the deposit growth was still
above the average seen in the years following the 2009 financial crisis, RBA said.
Total deposits of Bosnia and Herzegovina banks grew by 9.3% year-on-year to a total of 18.19 billion marka, with retail deposits accounting for 60% of the total or 10.9 billion marka, up 7.9%. Corporate deposits went up by an annual 8.6% to 4.02 million marka.
The loan-to-deposit ratio at 97.1% in April 2017 remained broadly unchanged from March.
(1 euro=1.95583 marka)