<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> Lending interest rates (IR) in the Serbian market are generally viewed as high. In accordance with the official NBS (National bank of Serbia) data for 2010: lending (IR) was 10.4% p.a., deposit IR was 4.2% p.a., and spread was 6.3% p.a. At the same time, IR on cross-border loans was 3.7% p.a. It means that the use of cross-border loans was a better solution for companies which were in position to take them. The indicator of IR spread in Serbia got worse and came down to 106<sup>th</sup> position (it used to be ranked 90th in 2009; WEF). If we analyse the structure of IR spread, we can notice that there is room for decreasing the level of active IR in the area of country risk premium and funding spread. Pearson Correlation shows that IR has strong relation with return on assets and volume of collected deposits i.e. profit margin per product.</p></abstract>

Lending interest rates (IR) in the Serbian market are generally viewed as high. In accordance with the official NBS (National bank of Serbia) data for 2010: lending (IR) was 10.4% p.a., deposit IR was 4.2% p.a., and spread was 6.3% p.a. At the same time, IR on cross-border loans was 3.7% p.a. It means that the use of cross-border loans was a better solution for companies which were in position to take them. The indicator of IR spread in Serbia got worse and came down to 106th position (it used to be ranked 90th in 2009; WEF). If we analyse the structure of IR spread, we can notice that there is room for decreasing the level of active IR in the area of country risk premium and funding spread. Pearson Correlation shows that IR has strong relation with return on assets and volume of collected deposits i.e. profit margin per product.

Assesment of the Interest Rates in the Serbian Banking Sector

University Union Nikola Tesla, Sremski Karlovci, Serbia

Wiener Städtische, Vienna Insurance Group, Belgrade, Serbia

Journal of Central Banking Theory and Practice

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

{"article-title":"Assesment of the Interest Rates in the Serbian Banking Sector"}

Lending interest rates (IR) in the Serbian market are generally viewed as high. In accordance with the official NBS (National bank of Serbia) data for 2010:...

Assesment of the Interest Rates in the Serbian Banking Sector

Published Online: May 30, 2014

Page range: 21 - 35

Received: Sep 13, 2013

Accepted: Sep 27, 2013

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jcbtp-2014-0009

© Central Bank of Montenegro

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.