Population's overdue payments double to 159m euros

The population’s overdue payments for credits climbed to 573.2 million RON (equivalent to 159 million euros) in December last year, a two-fold increase in RON, according to data from the National Bank of Romania. December’s volume is an all time high, even though it is just a 0.2% marginal increase on the previous month. During the course of last year, overdue payments accumulated by individual clients fluctuated. In three of the months – April, July and November, the growth rate exceeded 10%, while during the rest of the months the rates were much lower. In October, there was even a slight correction. The fast rise of overdue payments came amid a significant increase in credits granted to individual clients. Last year, credits granted to the population saw an 82% increase, to 71.5 billion RON (19.8 billion euros). Under the circumstances, the share of overdue payments remained low, at 0.8% against 0.7% at the end of 2006.