September 19 (SeeNews) - Loans to Croatian households declined 0.4% on the year and 0.1% on the month to 117.1 billion kuna ($18.8 billion/15.7 billion euro) in July, the local unit of Raiffeisen Bank International said on Tuesday.
Loans in local currency continued to grow in July as loans denominated in foreign currency followed a deleveraging trend, Raiffeisenbank Austria Zagreb (RBA) said in a market report. Kuna loans to households reached 46.1% of total loans, up 7.1% on the year.
The rise in kuna loans was explained with the increasing awareness of Croatian bank customers of currency risks after the conversion of Swiss franc-denominated loans into euro and the simultaneous decline in interest rates on loans denominated in kuna, RBA said.
Housing loans accounted for 43.8% of total loans to households, while their value decreased 1.8% on the year to 51.3 billion kuna. They were followed by general purpose cash loans with a 23.8% share and rising value of 7.2% year-on-year.
RBA noted that the process of household sector deleveraging is coming to an end, but added that its recovery is expected to be very modest and largely dependent on trends in the labour market.
(1 euro = 7.46749 kuna)