The National Institute of Statistics (INS) has recently published a note entitled “Debt of non-financial economic agents”.
This document, based on the results of the financial accounts for the period 2015-2022, takes a look at the debt of non-financial economic agents and highlights the benchmarks and recent trends in this fundamentally topical area.
The institutional household sector, which includes households, sole proprietors and, for the sake of simplicity, NPISHs or associations, shows a debt ratio that rises slightly and steadily between 2015 and 2019 (to around 41.6% of GNDI on average), reaching 49.5% in 2022.
This reflects the evolution of loans to households, which are their only source of debt in terms of the financial instruments identified, but also the evolution of the formation of gross disposable national income (GNDI).
Growth of loans to households
Outstanding loans have increased steadily, more than doubling between 2015 and 2022, from 26.3 billion dinars in 2015 to 55.3 billion dinars in 2022. The increase in outstanding loans, explains the INS, is the result of the increase in consumer credit, in particular loans granted for the renovation or furnishing of dwellings and for current expenditure, but also loans with longer maturities intended for the purchase of housing.
The net flow of credit increased from 1.75 billion dinars in 2015 to 4.06 billion dinars in 2022. This increase can be explained by the BCT’s decision to raise the key interest rate twice in 2019 in order to counter the resurgence of inflationary pressures in 2019, which pose a risk to the economy.
