Expensive loans in Serbia - analysts of Erste Bank announce restrictive policy of banks in field of crediting large investments

- The entrepreneurs and citizens of Serbia should expect growth of interest rates in the following period, as well as restrictive policy of the banks in field of approval of loans for large investments - the analysts of Erste Bank announced.

Slavko Carić, Deputy President of the Executive Board of Erste Bank Novi Sad, said at today's (October 6, 2008) press conference that Serbia would not remain completely immune to current financial crisis, but its effects would be lessened thanks to the country's economic growth.

According to the words of Carić, growth of GNP in Serbia will remain strong and it will amount to about 7% by the end of year 2008. As he explained, growth of GNP is still driven by local demand.

Presenting the new report on Serbia, made by the Research team of Erste Bank, Alen Kovač, macroeconomic analyst, said that the level of political risk was significantly lower than six months before and that Serbia was on the right path towards EU.

- After some negative trends in the first half of the year, we expect that inflation in Serbia will be smaller by the end of the year. Expected inflation rate in 2008 is close to 11% – said Kovač.

The analysts from Erste Bank expect that the exchange rate of Euro will be stable, thanks to the measures of the National Bank of Serbia, which should preserve stability of the exchange rate in order to control inflationary pressures and expectations.

Complete Erste Group's report on Serbia

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