Overdue payments on loans taken out by individuals have exceeded the equivalent of 100 million euros in October. This is a first, the Credit Bureau's data shows.
A year ago, overdue loans amounted to 42.4 million euros, 1.5 times lower.
"We now have 290,000 debtors that have fallen behind with their payments. Out of these, 240,000 have overdue loans taken from one lender, while the rest were reported by several participants to the system," says Serban Epure, the general manager of the Credit Bureau. The database of the Credit Bureau currently holds data about approximately 2 million people, almost half of whom have black marks under their name, due to overdue payments on loans or breaking conditions set by their lender.
Individuals' overdue debts went up 7% in October, to the equivalent of 373 million RON. Most of the overdue debt comes from loans taken out in domestic currency, 341 million RON (the equivalent of 97 million euros). Overdue payments on loans in euros amount to 8.4 million euros.
The numbers of individuals that have fallen behind in their debt repayments has increased almost twice as fast as loans taken over the past year. According to the latest NBR data, loans withdrawn by the population had increased 88% (calculated in euros) in September this year against September last year.
The basis for comparison in terms of overdue payments on loans, however, is much smaller, which makes the growth pace seem higher.
In euros, credit taken out by individuals has increased from 5.3 billion euros in September last year, to a little more than 10 billion euros at the end of the third quarter of 2006.
The faster-paced growth of overdue debt shows that the rapid expansion of lending came with a cost, deteriorating the quality of the portfolio. However, there is a reason for the explosion in lending, as banks, in their rac
