When searching for a loan 49 per cent of Bulgarians would still turn to relatives instead of a crediting institution, Antoniya Gogova, head of research at the marketing company GfK Bulgaria, said on October 30, as quoted by investor.bg.

Only 28.3 per cent of Bulgarians would seek credit from a bank as a first choice, while another 27.8% would ask their friends when wanting to borrow money, Gogova said at a news conference presenting GfK’s marketing research on this country’s financial market.

Regardless of the still prevailing relatives-and-friends oriented borrowing mood among Bulgarians, there was a stable growth on the credit market in the last five years. In 2006, nine per cent of the local population had borrowed a loan, compared to just four per cent five years earlier. The country was occupying one of the last places in the Central and Eastern Europe’s ranking in terms of the percentage of borrowers, followed only by the Czech Republic with eight per cent. 

Almost 30 per cent of Bulgarians told a GfK poll they would “make it without credit”, 28.9 per cent said they did not like to be debtors, and 25.1 per cent said they would borrow if they needed money. Only around three per cent of the population was living entirely “on credit”.