Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said after a meeting with bankers on Wednesday that banks would charge an interest rate of 4.95 percent on loans for the purchase of apartments to be subsidised by the government.
"At the government's session on Thursday we will propose a modified model which will enable the sale of a much higher number of flats and which envisages an interest rate of 4.95 percent," Kosor said after talks with officials from seven banks.
The bankers have expressed strong support regarding the completion of Croatia's EU entry talks, because Croatia's membership in the EU will result, among other things, in lower interest rates, Kosor said.
She would not comment on the new model in greater detail, but the president of the Raiffeisein Bank Management Board, Zdenko Adrovic, told reporters the government intended to subsidise through that project the purchase of 1,000 flats in 2010. The interest rate in question will be a fixed rate to last for a certain period of time, and we hope that later the climate for taking housing loans in Croatia will be better, he said.
Adrovic said that statistics provided by the central bank showed a visible decline in interest rates on housing loans in 2010. An average interest rate on a housing loan is currently 6.02 percent and it has a tendency to continue falling, which will definitely happen this year, he said.
Kosor said that today's meeting did not discuss the imposing of taxes on banks.
We discussed the possibility of introducing additional taxes for banks with representatives of all leading banks in Croatia last year, but they told us that it would have repercussions for all citizens. We did not insist on it any longer, but we agreed to work together on new models so that we could overcome the crisis as soon as possible, Kosor said.
