There are hints that banks in Serbia could extend the moratorium on loan repayment to certain clients, but neither the economy nor the citizens believe that this will happen.
In a few days, more precisely next Wednesday, the quarterly stop of loan repayment expires, which means that all those who chose that option in mid-March will have to start repaying the installment.
The Association of Serbian Banks mentions an option in which banks would be left to choose to whom they could extend the moratorium, as announced in Montenegro.
However, those 93 percent of the total number of indebted people in the economy who decided to do this and 94 percent of the total number of citizens who chose not to pay the installments for three months do not believe that there will be further delays.
However, they are not sure how much further “freezing” would be profitable.
The calculation is clear, everyone who has a loan and has not paid the installment in the previous three months will pay more than those who did not “pause”.
The National Bank of Serbia explained how much on one specific example.
It is a loan of 4.500 euros for seven years, with an interest rate of 9.82 percent, which was raised in February 2018. The monthly installment of that loan was 70 euros.
The one who has not paid this loan for three months from Wednesday will start repaying 2.5 euros more per month. As it will be explained by the NBS, it will be like that until the end of the loan payment, ie for the next five years.
The three months they did not pay will eventually cost them some 150 euros more than those who repaid the loan all the time. Banks could offer clients two more options, but this was the first one offered to them as the most favorable.
Among businessmen, mostly the smaller ones opted for the moratorium, and how and whether they will be able to repay the installments now that the banks “unfreeze” the loans, Nebojsa Atanackovic from the Union of Employers says that it is difficult to predict.
“There will be different situations in which businessmen will find themselves, someone will find it easier to push everything harder, but in general, it is certain that all those who were on the verge of endurance will be extremely burdened,” he points out.
It is difficult, as he says, to predict what will happen, because the situation with the virus looks worse than it was, so there is no room for optimism that after three months, something will start to get better. Atanackovic says that our economy is threatened by a prolonged danger and reminds that a good part, especially service activities, have just stopped.
“It helped that the economy received help in the form of a minimum for all companies that asked for it, as well as delaying the payment of taxes and contributions, and for some it even meant total income because they had nothing. That was positive, as well as this postponement of the loan payment, but let’s not forget that both will be paid,” Nebojsa Atanackovic notes.
Like the employers, the indebted citizens do not believe in the extension of the repayment, and the president of the Association of Effectives, Dejan Gavrilovic, says that if there is a plan for it to happen in the same way, it is better not to extend it.
“If they will extend it as before by charging double the regular interest, then it is better not to extend it,” says Gavrilovic.
The moratorium is bad, he believes, because it is presented to debtors in a non-transparent way.
“Citizens have not been told in a clear way how much it will cost them. It was presented as a relief, and now we will see on July 1 how much that relief will cost each debtor,” Gavrilovic points out. He has no doubt that there are those who have lost their jobs or whose salaries have been reduced and for whom this has helped for a short time. Most, he notes, did not help.
“It just helped them, because it will increase their installments a lot, especially with housing loans, where the installments will be increased by a few euros a month, so the additional costs will therefore be 1,000 euros,” Gavrilovic emphasizes.
He says that the moratorium for banks was a new opportunity to make money, and that the state has mechanisms, but it does not have the will or strength to oppose the banks in the right way, Danas reports.
