Population's overdue loans stabilise at 169m euros in March

Overdue bank loans accumulated by the population were slightly up in March, and almost reached 628 million RON (169 million euros), according to data from the NBR (National Bank of Romania), after an 8% leap in February. The slowdown in the growth rate came after a major upshoot in February, when the volume climbed by almost 8%. Although a new historic high was registered in March, the annualised growth rate saw a rather significant slowdown. The increase stood at 93% compared with March 2007, down from 100% in February and 117% in September. In euros, the growth witnessed in March compared with last year stood at just 74%, as a result of the depreciation of the exchange rate. The calculation of the precise annual growth will only be possible from April, because the NBR changed the reporting methodology in April last year. Whereas initially, the NBR only kept track of overdue payments for loans worth less than 20,000 RON granted to individual clients, since April last year, it started to collect data from the Credit Bureau, the body created by commercial banks in order to manage data on the retail lending market, which keeps a record of all loans.