January 19 (SeeNews) - The outstanding personal loans of Serbia's banking sector increased to 796.8 billion dinars (6.43 billion euro/$6.86 billion) at the end of 2016, up 12% year-on-year, the Association of Serbian Banks said.
Refinancing loans rose the most, by 51.9%, to 73.9 billion dinars, while cash credit grew by 18.5% to 262.1 billion dinars, the association said in a statement on Tuesday.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans totalled 386.6 billion dinars at the end of 2016, up 3.2% year-on-year.
The share of personal loans overdue by more than 60 days grew to 12.6% in 2016 from 11.4% a year earlier.
The number of Serbian citizens with current accounts increased to 4.901 million at the end of last year from 4.808 million in 2015, the Association of Serbian Banks said.
The combined value of outstanding corporate loans increased to 48 billion dinars at the end of 2016, up by 7.1% year-on-year, while credit to legal entities decreased by 4.4% to 1.332 trillion dinars.
Serbia's central bank NBS said last month that the country's banking sector extended loans worth 323.8 billion dinars in the third quarter of 2016, the highest quarterly volume in the last five years.
(1 euro = 123.949 dinars)