The Central Bank has changed the methodology for assessing the debt burden of the population. The regulator clarified the main indicator of the indicator – the debt service ratio (CODE) – due to the fact that it took into account the impersonal data of credit history bureaus (NBKI, OKB and Equifax) on borrowers in the calculations. This ratio reflects the ratio of the total size of planned payments of the population on loans to the total income of households. After recalculation, the RCD turned out to be lower: as of January 1, 2021, it amounted to 9.8% of the disposable income of the population against 11.5% calculated according to the previous method. In 2020, the debt burden of citizens increased by 0.8 percentage points (in accordance with the previous methodology – by 0.9 percentage points), of which 0.6 percentage points fell on unsecured consumer loans and 0, 2 pp – for a mortgage.
At the end of the first quarter of this year, the debt burden of citizens updated its historical maximum according to the old method, reaching 11.7%, the Central Bank reported. Its growth is associated with a decrease in the disposable income of the population, as well as an increase in overdue debt on consumer loans. Debt load is an important indicator of the accumulation of systemic risks. An increase in it may indicate not only a drop in household income, but also a softening of lending standards by banks (for example, providing loans to borrowers with a high debt burden) or a growing penetration of lending. That is why, the Central Bank notes, the accuracy of measuring the debt burden of the population is important for assessing the systemic risks of the banking sector and negative consequences for the economy, as well as for taking timely regulatory measures. For example, raising the premiums to risk ratios for loans.
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