Almost half of Romanians plan to contract bank loans

Roughly 44% of Romanians plan to contract a bank loan over the next six months - the highest share among the surveyed European countries, and only 8% of them are sure they will not rely on borrowing, according to a poll conducted by market research company GfK. Globally, only Mexicans are more inclined to borrow (48% of them consider bank loans over the next half a year), while 37% of Poles, 24% of Czechs, 16% of Hungarians, 14% of Lithuanians and only 11% of Spaniards intend to resort to lending in the next six months, local Hotnews.ro reported. For Romanians, the top reasons for getting loans are house improvement (47% of those planning a loan mentioned this reason, among others), the purchase of a car (44%), buying electronics and home appliances (41%), covering health expenditure (41%) and unexpected expenses (37%). Simple calculations indicate that same person might have more than a reason to borrow. The cause of the aggressive borrowing plans in Romania might stem from the continuous rise in household income recently: 44% of Romanians consider that the financial situation of their family has improved while only 17% see a negative trend. But borrowing comes at a cost. Six out of ten Romanians (60%) allocate between 10% and 30% of their monthly income to service their outstanding loans already. The same percentage of the monthly income is allocated by 56% of Hungarians and Poles, 55% of Spaniards and 51% of Czechs. On the upside, fewer Romanians are highly indebted: only 2% of them spend more than 60% of their revenues for servicing debt, compared to 3% in Poland and 8% in Lithuania. editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Pexels.com)