April 10 (SeeNews) - Serbia's 90-day moratorium on loan repayment by clients of commercial banks and financial leasing companies, in force since March 18, already applies to loans worth 2 billion euro ($2.2 billion) combined, the Association of Serbian Banks said on Friday.
"As many as 92.9% of corporate loan borrowers opted for the moratorium, while 7.1% stated that they still want to pay their obligations. The companies that have decided to pay their liabilities to banks invariably are larger companies, so they account for about 30% of the total credit indebtedness of the economy," the secretary general of the association, Vladimir Vasic, said in a statement.
The moratorium was applied by 94% of citizens who have obligations to banks, while less than 6% explicitly asked to continue repayment, the association said.
Serbia's central bank introduced the moratorium on March 18 in order to alleviate the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the country's economy. Banks and financial leasing providers are obliged to post a notice about the postponement of repayment obligations on their websites and clients will be able to reject the offer in a period of ten days afterward, the central bank said back then.
($ = 0.913883 euro)