FinMin greets banks’ steps but expects more
The systemic banks’ proposals on Thursday for helping low-income debtors by covering 50% of the rise in interest rates on their installments “is a good first step,” Finance Minister Christos Staikouras told Parliament on Friday.
Addressing the debate on the 2023 state budget, Staikouras also expressed the belief that more measures “will follow, directly.” “We believe that financial institutions will move faster and decisively,” he said, adding that this, after all, would be “in the interest of the system’s stability and of boosting competition.”
Banks also agreed to reexamine their interest rate policy and to look into reducing fees for various simple bank transactions, he said.
The FinMin also said that the government’s policies secured the banks’ and funds’ stability, and referred to the “Hercules” program for nonperforming loans, the rate of which “has now dropped to a single-digit number over total loans.”
At the same time, he said, “household and business bank deposits have increased significantly because of trust in the implemented economic policy, rising by 35% over the last three years.”
However, externally generated crises are persisting “and the state budget as well as taxpayers can only assume so much of the cost – the logic of ‘my profits are solely mine, but the cost is yours’ will not be reciprocated by the current government.”
On the contrary, he said, “the cost must be shared by the banking system as well, always in respect of the European regulatory framework and the need to maintain the payment culture.”
