December 14 (SeeNews) - Serbia's central bank, the NBS, said on Friday the share of dinar-denominated loans extended by local banks in the first nine months of 2017 stood at 35.8%, down by one percentage point on the year.
The share of dinar-denominated deposits of households in the country's bank system fell by 0.1 of a percentage point on the year to 15.7% at the end of September, the NBS said in a quarterly report.
The Serbian banks extended loans with a combined value of 382.2 billion dinars ($317 million/269 million euro) in July-September. The total value of dinar-denominated loans issued in the third quarter rose by 700 million dinars on the year, while those denominated in foreign currency increased by 49.8 billion dinars, the NBS said.
At the end of September, the total value of household and corporate deposits increased by 22.6 billion dinars quarter-on-quarter came in at 1.948 trillion dinars. The dinar-denominated deposits accounted for 29.1% of total at the end of September, versus 28.5% in June.
The average interest rate of dinar-denominated deposits in the Serbian banking system amounted to 2.99% at the end of September. For euro-denominated deposits it stood at 0.45%, the NBS said.
In 2012, the Serbian government and NBS adopted a strategy for the "dinarisation" of the country's economy. The aim of the strategy is to achieve a satisfactory level of use of the dinar in the financial system, in order to improve the country’s financial stability, lessen the risk of exchange rate volatility and reinforce the effectiveness of monetary policy.
(1 euro = 119.137 dinars)