16.1 pct of households unable to pay current expenses on time at least once in 2023

Last year, 16.1% of households were unable to pay on time some of their important current expenses (house maintenance, loan installments, utilities, etc.), according to an analysis of the living conditions of the Romanian population in 2023, conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).The most frequent cases of overdue bill payments in 2023 were those for home maintenance (79.8%) and electricity (75%)."Paying bank installments is a priority for every household. However, 7.0% of households mentioned that, due to their precarious financial situation, they were overdue on various loans (other than loans for house purchase). The lower share of these outstanding debts is mainly explained by the specific nature of these types of payments, which penalize more severely the failure to meet payment deadlines, and by the low frequency of households having to repay loans," emphasizes the INS.In 2023, the share of households with outstanding debts fell by 2.4 percentage points compared to the previous year, and by residence by 2.1 percentage points in urban areas and by 2.9 percentage points in rural areas. In rural areas, 18.2% of households specified that, in 2023, there was at least one situation in which they were unable to pay on timeWhile members of urban households had past-due bills for household maintenance (85.9% of households), in rural areas the highest share of past-due bills was for electricity (84.3% of households).As in 2022, the phenomenon of past-due bills in 2023 was more prevalent among households with dependent children (17.8%), single parent households with at least one minor dependent child (21.2%) and households with two adults with 3 or more minor dependent children (32.9%).The statistical data were obtained through the "Quality of Life Survey", conducted in May 2023, informs the INS.