Last year, consumer lending in Belarus grew by 45.7%, or 1.375 billion BYN. This was the second year in a row when the growth rate of the consumer lending market exceeded 40%.
Vera Yanut, deputy director of the retail business department of Dabrabyt Bank, revealed what Belarusians take consumer loans for, writes marketing.by.
According to her, if you look at the graph of personal loan debt growth, you can see the maximum demand in April-May before holidays and in August-September before the start of the school season. There is also strong growth in November-December before the New Year holidays. Using this statistics, you can roughly understand what Belarusians mainly take loans for.
Depending on the goods, “quick loans” are taken for a period of 12-24 months. Judging by the statistics of the National Bank, the demand for these loans is gradually growing: while in January 2018 the share of new consumer loans for a period of 1-2 years was 15.7%, in December they were already 19.2% of all loans given to individuals.
“As a rule, such loans are given for the purchase of mobile phones, household appliances, TVs, furniture. And the average amount of the requested loan varies between 500 and 2,000 Belarusian rubles,” said Vera Yanut.
Another interesting fact is that with the rapid growth of consumer lending, the payment discipline of Belarus remains high. According to the National Bank, the share of overdue consumer loans in 2018 decreased from 0.9% to 0.6%.
