Overall debt of businesses and households increases in January
According to the Bank of Russia’s statistics, the overall debt of non-financial organisations and households on bank loans and issued debt securities1 totalled 61.1 trillion rubles as of 1 February 2020, growing by 110.9 billion rubles, or 0.2% over January. This primarily resulted from the expansion of bank lending to households.
The non-financial sector’s debt decreased by 35.3 billion rubles in January 2020 compared to the previous month, to total 41.9 trillion rubles. The main reason behind this was that debt on ruble-denominated debt securities reduced by 71.2 billion rubles, to 6.6 trillion rubles.
The annual growth rate of non-financial institutions’ debt on ruble-denominated bank loans continued to slow down in January, equalling 5.6% against 8.1% in the previous month. The annual growth of ruble-denominated bond debt also decelerated from 11.8% to 10.4%.
In January 2020, non-financial institutions’ debt on ruble-denominated bank loans slightly shrank by 25.5 billion rubles, or 0.1%, to total 29.1 trillion rubles. In addition, non-financial institutions’ debt on bank loans continued to dominate their debt structure, accounting for 81.6%.
Households’ debt expanded by 146.2 billion rubles over January 2020, to 19.2 trillion rubles. However, the annual growth rate of households’ debt on ruble-denominated bank loans continued to go down, equalling 16.8% as of 1 February 2020 (vs 19.3% at the beginning of the year). The proportion of foreign currency loans in the retail loan portfolio was minimal, at 0.7%.
1 The debt of the non-financial sector and households on bank loans and issued debt securities is a comprehensive indicator based on monetary and securities statistics that enables prompt assessment of fund raising trends in the credit and equity markets.