In July 2018, household loans went up 4.1 percent on the year to 121.9 billion kuna (€16.4 billion), increasing for the 11th consecutive month to their highest since January 2016, Raiffeisenbank Austria said on Thursday, commenting on recent figures published by the Croatian central bank.

Month on month, household loans went up by 0.1 percent, or 119 million kuna (€16 million).

The share of household loans in the domestic currency went up five percent, and kuna loans accounted for 51 percent of all loans in July 2018.

Kuna loans exceeded 62 billion kuna (€8.3 billion) that month, up 0.6 percent on the month and 15.3 percent compared to July 2017.

The annual increase of kuna loans began in the first half of 2013, while loans pegged to a foreign currency began decreasing annually in 2012.

At the end of July 2018, foreign currency loans totalled 69.7 billion kuna (€9.3 billion), down 5.4 percent on the year.

Over 43 percent of household loans were housing loans, rising annually by 2.7 percent to 52.7 billion kuna (€7.1 billion).

Kuna household loans totalled 14.9 billion kuna (€2 billion) at the end of July 2018, up 21.9 percent on the year. Kuna household loans accounted for 28.3 percent of that amount, up 4.5 percentage points on the year.

Household loans in a foreign currency, primarily those pegged to the euro, dropped to 7.8 billion kuna (€1.05), down 3.4 percent from July 2017.

(€1 = 7.42 kuna)

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