Serbian banks loan portfolio up 3% y/y at end-2023 - bank association

On a monthly comparison basis, loans increased by 0.4% in December, the ASB said in a monthly report last week.

Legal entities owed 1.88 trillion dinars in loans to banks as of the end of December, up 1.7% year-on-year, while entrepreneurs owed 70 billion dinars, a drop of 1.3% on an annual comparison basis.

Retail loans rose 4.9% to 1.49 trillion dinars last year. Of these, cash loans to households accounted for 697 billion dinars at the end of 2023, up 4.8% year-on-year, while consumer loans fell by 22.4% to 18 billion dinars. Loans to the agriculture sector rose 8.5% on an annual basis to almost 90 billion dinars at the end of 2023, while mortgage and renovation loans grew 6.2% to 662 billion dinars in the reviewed period.

The overall share of bad loans fell to 2.7% at the end of 2023, from 2.8% a year earlier.

In 2022, Serbian banks' loan portfolio increased by 6.3%, according to earlier ASB data.

(1 euro = 117.191 dinar)