The number of Romanians who were more than 30 days late in paying their instalments to banks and nonbanking financial institutions (IFN) went up by 13,000 in the first month of this year compared to December 2016, to almost 649,000, according to data published by Romania’s National Bank (BNR).

The overdue amounts totaled almost EUR 1.8 billion, with EUR 1 billion being more than 90 days overdue.

The number of late payers has increased in the last three reported months, after reaching a 7-year low of 611,600, in October last year.

Previously, the number of overdue debtors had dropped significantly, from over 754,000 in June 2016. The drop may have been related to the sale of bad loan portfolios. Banks usually prefer to sell portfolios of bad loans, for which the debtors are more than 90 days late in repaying the, for some 10% of their value, and let debt recovery firms deal with recovering whatever they can from those bad payers.

editor@romania-insider.com