With the deposit book growing at a much faster rate than the loan portfolio, some of the experts warn about households’ unwillingness to invest and exaggerated credit safeguards applied to businesses. Others do not see any serious problems so far.
Stasys Kropas, the president of the Lithuanian Banks Association, told the daily that the recent growth in deposits actually showed that households had been able to make savings even during the economic crisis.
Dr. Gediminas Radzevičius from the ISM University of Management and Economics agreed that the growth of fixed-term and regular deposits might be related with an increase in household and business income that was triggered by positive shifts in macroeconomic environment.
However, he also believes that this trend also shows that households and businesses are not too confident about the economic situation and are more inclined to save than to invest in the future.
