Bankers: Bulgarians Run out of Non-Deposited Savings

UniCredit Bulbank Director Levon Hampartsumyan says Bulgarians have run out of non-deposited savings. Photo by BGNES

Bulgarians have run out of money that they kept outside of banks or other saving institutions.

This is the opinion of a group of Bulgarian bankers as cited by the Trud Daily, which is based on the very slow increase of bank deposits in 2009.

New deposits in Bulgarian banks grew only by 2,7% in January-August 2009 compared to a 13% growth for the same period of 2008, according to the Director of UniCredit Bulbank, Levon Hampartsumyan.

Hampartsumyan said that despite the “deposit hysteria” there were hardly any new deposits in the banking system.

“If the people had free money, they would take advantage of the favorable offers of the banks,” he is quoted as saying. Hampartsumyan also mentioned the popular Bulgarian saying that people also keep their money "in jars" at home over fears that the banks would go bankrupt - as was often the case in the 1990s. 

Bulgarian National Bank data shows that in August 2009 the deposits of the Bulgarian citizens amounted to BGN 22,9 B, which a BGN 600 M increase in the first eight months of the year. In comparison, the increase in the same period of 2008 was BGN 2,5 B.

The total amount of money loaned to private persons until August 2009 was BGN 18,4 B, compared to BGN 17,1 B a year earlier.

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