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Bulgaria loan rates creep up after brief cool-off

After leveling off and even edging lower for two months, interest rates on consumer and housing loans in Bulgaria turned around in May to top 13.96% and 10.39%, respectively. The increase was triggered by higher rates on term deposits, which hit 8.23% for levs and 6.73% for euro, showed figures of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB). The effective interest rate on euro-denominated home loans defied the uptrend, slipping to 8.16% from 8.21% in April, close to the 8% level recorded for last September. Climbing interest rates pushed up the annual percentage rate (APR) to 15.01% for local-currency consumer loans, up almost 3 percentage points on the year. Euro-denominated consumer loans came with a rate of 12.73%, and the housing loans in the respective currencies bore 11.01% and 8.95%. Another driver behind the APR was the lenders& rsquo; base interest rates, which replaced market indexes such as Euribor, Sofibor and the central bank rate. Bulgarian banks are increasingly turning into the do...