March 26 (SeeNews) - Loans to Bulgaria's non-government sector grew by 12.9% on the year to some 91.7 billion levs ($50.8 billion/46.9 billion euro) at the end of February, following an annual rise of 12.3% in January, the central bank said on Tuesday.
The value of non-government loans at the end of the second month of this year was equal to 46.3% of Bulgaria's gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for 2024, the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) said in a monthly monetary statistics report.
Loans granted to non-financial corporations went up by an annual 8% to some 44.8 billion levs in February after recording a yearly growth of 7.2% in January.
In parallel, loans to financial corporations leapt by 23.1% year-on-year to 7.5 billion levs in the review month, with their growth easing from 25.8% recorded in January.
In terms of household loans, their volume amounted to roughly 39.4 billion levs at the end of last month, or 17.1% more than in the same month of 2023 and 0.8 percentage points higher than their growth rate in January.
Out of the total household loans, those for house purchases increased by 22% to 20.5 billion levs in annual terms, while consumer loans added 13.1% to some 17.2 billion levs.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)