March 13 (SeeNews) - Loans granted by banks in Serbia totalled 3.41 trillion dinars ($27.9 billion/25.6 billion euro) at the end of February, up 3.1% compared to a year earlier, the Association of Serbian Banks (ASB) said.
On a monthly comparison basis, however, the volume of loans remained unchanged, the ASB said in a monthly report published on Tuesday.
Legal entities owed 1.84 trillion dinars in loans to banks as of the end of February, up 1.7% year-on-year, while entrepreneurs owed 70 billion dinars, a rise of 1.3% on an annual comparison basis.
Retail loans rose 4.9% on the year to 1.50 trillion dinars at the end of February. Of these, cash loans to households accounted for 700 billion dinars at the end of February, up 5.8% year-on-year, while consumer loans fell by 22% to 17.6 billion dinars. Loans to the agriculture sector rose 6.4% on an annual basis to 89 billion dinars, while mortgage and renovation loans grew 5% to 661 billion dinars in the reviewed period.
The overall share of bad loans was 2.7% at the end of February, unchanged from the end of 2023.
In 2023, Serbian banks' loan portfolio increased by 3% compared to 2022, according to earlier ASB data.
(1 euro = 117.214 dinar)