Total deposits held by commercial banks in Croatia have reached an all-time high in nominal value, increasing by 0.2% on the month and 3.4% on the year, data from the Croatian National Bank show.
Compared to the end of 2018, deposits at the end of November 2019 increased by 2.8%.
The continued increase in deposits in November is the result of a continued strong increase of deposit money and to a lesser degree, savings and term deposits in the kuna currency.
Deposit money reached HRK 103.1 billion at the end of November, accounting for 35% of total deposits.
Compared to November 2018 that increase amounted to HRK 15 billion or 17% whereas in comparison to the end of 2018, that category of deposits increased by more than HRK 11.3 billion.
A double-digit increase in deposit money has continued since March 2013 with some minor oscillations.
Total demand and term deposits in foreign currencies and in the domestic currency fell by 2.7% on the year and remained stable on the month, amounting to HRK 193.7 billion at the end of November.
The decrease in the value of demand and term deposits on the year is exclusively due to a 3.7% decrease in foreign currency deposits considering that kuna demand and term deposits increased by 1.9%. At the end of November 2019, kuna demand and term deposits amounted to HRK 35.6 billion while foreign currency deposits amounted to HRK 193.6 billion.
Even though over the past few years the structure of deposits has changed considerably in favour of deposit money, the currency structure of demand and term deposits has remained the same and foreign currency deposits still account for more than 80% of all deposits. However, with the significant growth of deposit money, the share of kuna deposits in total bank deposits has reached a share of 47%.
Analysts at Raiffeisen Bank (RBA) believe that the continuing economic growth and increase in available income will result in a continuing growth of total bank deposits.
“Considering the high liquidity of the financial system we expect interest rates to remain low and liquid assets such as deposit money to continue increasing. The structure of term deposits will not change drastically in the coming quarters,” the RBA analysts said in their comment.
