Study : half of the Romanians have debts and three quarter do not feel the moral pressure to pay them in time

  Half of the Romanians have debts, and 77% do not feel the moral pressure to pay them on time, shows the most recent study made by Kruk Romania.The study shows that only 8% of the Romanians pay their debts responsibly and 77% do not have the sensation of moral pressure when they do not pay them back. Moreover, out of the interviewees, 43% do not consider that they should pay their debt because it is fair, although three quarters of them think that the people who do not pay back their debts are not to be trusted. Moreover, 88% would like to be rewarded for paying their debt on time. Almost one third of them with loans go beyond the deadline of 30 days.The study shows that for 16% of the Romanians with loans the payment of the debt is not a priority. At the same time, 3% of the Romanians think that nothing can happen to them if they do not pay their debts on time.The study made by Kruk shows that half of the Romanians do not have any savings during a normal month, but almost the same percentage have debts. Most of the Romanians choose banks as a saving instrument, although 68% state they do not trust them. Only 1% would choose investments in gold and only 2% crypto coins or the stock exchange. This happens as almost 40%of the Romanians state that the money only lasts for a decent living.As a result, the worry of the banks and other creditors that they will not get their money back is justified, think the representatives of Kruk Romania and even when getting a postponement which seems like an oxygen boost the risk of non-payment is still there. The degree of indebtedness has increased this year by 4% both for natural persons (172 billion lei against the first quarter of last year) and legal persons (220 billion lei). A significant part of those who have loans – the most recent estimate referred to 10% of the postponed loans – will get into the category of non-performing for which the banks needed and will need to have provisions. Personal loans and those of companies in the affected sectors will be hard to manage next year as well.As compared to the level of 2008, before the previous economic crisis, the official data show that the population indebtedness grew by almost 50% due to the increase of banking creditation. The financial system expects a new wave of non-performing loans, generated by the sanitary crisis. For the moment, the BNR data show that, at the end of the second quarter of this year, the rate of non-performing loans was 3.78% against 3.94% at the end of June. The rate of non-performance of the non-financial companies which used the suspension of rates was 12.3% in March this year, as compared to 5.2% for the companies which did not declare moratoriums while for the sector of the population the values were 7.4% and 3.1% respectively.According to the ministry of finances, until the end of September 2020, the total balance of loans for which postponements were approved was 42.9 billion lei (8.8 billion euro). The percentage of those loans – contracts of almost 558,000 debtors – represents 14.7% of the total of loans offered by the local banking sector. The study made with IRES in November 2021 was started in Romania to celebrate ‘ Day without Debts’ an international initiative of the Kruk group, organized for the eleventh year in a row on 17th November.