The annual percentage rate (APR), used to calculate total costs of contracting and servicing a loan, on Bulgaria's lev-denominated housing loans exceeded the 10 per cent mark in August, an increase of 1.32 percentage points year-on-year, central bank data showed.

APR added 1.81 points to 12.74 per cent on consumer loans and hit 8.83 per cent on euro-denominated housing loans.

Interest rates on consumer loans saw the biggest increase, gaining 2.33 percentage points to 11.66 per cent.

Leva-denominate mortgage loans bore an average rate of 9.53 per cent, up 1.18 percentage points year-on-year. The rate of euro-denominates mortgage loans was 7.94 per cent, up 0.46 percentage points from August 2007.

Bankers have forecast that interest rates will continue to crawl up and rise by 0.6 to one percentage points in the coming months, dulling borrowers' appetite.

Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank has projected in its latest analysis that household loan demand will stay high in Central and Eastern Europe. Last year, South-Eastern European banks outran their Central European peers, as loan portfolios grew to 48 per cent of the gross domestic product of the countries in the region, with consumer loan products dominating their portfolios. In Central Europe, the ratio is 45.7 per cent.

In Bulgaria, the average interest rate of leva-deominated corporate loans of up to one million euro rose by 1.67 percentage points to 10.96 per cent in the 12 months to August. Euro-denominated business loans grew 0.22 percentage points costlier reaching 8.92 per cent.

Leva-denominated loans of over one million euro carried an interest of 11.33 per cent, up 2.32 percentage points, against 8.42 per cent for euro-denominated loans.

Source: Dnevnik.bg