Portugal’s residents again are gorging themselves on credit card spending, taking out mortgages and buying new vehicles in a record breaking splurge the likes of which have not been seen for ten years.
Mortgages are at the top of the list with numbers back to the heady days before the crisis but the Bank of Portugal appears untroubled, saying the credit boom simply is a result of people having more money and more people having jobs.
The situation is not all rosy as the Bank of Portugal also revels that there are 137,000 Portuguese credit card holders in default.
Despite the Bank's recent guidelines issued to banks to gently persuade them to ease off on granting credit, mainly by tightening the acceptance criteria, non-mortgage consumer credit rose 10.3% last year, mostly granted as car loans.
The credit card boom has been swollen by 43,000 new users and the total amount now owed by card holders has topped €3 billion.
The Bank of Portugal points to overall default rates, stating that debtor numbers have declined as last year just under 200,000 people were unable to meet credit and credit card repayments.
Comments
.....The UK financial services sector contributed £119 billion to the UK economy.
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The UK financial services sector was granted permission by the EU to operate as the financial hub of the European Union and to use the passporting financial services which Non-EU countries must use to access financial businesses in the EU.
This EU financial service will no longer operate in the UK after 29th March and the £119 billion revenue for Britain will disappear along with the car industry, the EU medical research council and many more.
So Jordan, please don't be mean about other countries that "appear" to be less affluent than your own,as the UK is about to become a third country and because of this it's economic outlook will be poor for the foreseeable future. So the moral of the story is "people who live in glass houses, should not throw stones."
By the way, l am not Portugese, but l have lived here for a long time, and I don't think that Portugese people have an inferiority complex about Britain. I doubt very much if they think about this, to them, Britain is Britain and Portugal is Portugal.
Chez, may I suggest you wear a suit next time - they might just give you a sack full of cash
Are you sure the Portuguese readers have an inferiority complex, or do certain British readers have a superiority complex?
HMM.
It doesn't mater which bank or which country AL. They are all at it, and until there is the political will to do something. It is not if it will all happen again but when..
Agree, not mistakes at all. It takes some skill to run down banks like RBS in such a short time. If I remember correctly the Chief executive of RBS was rewarded for his "mistake" with a small fortune.
Portugese banks will need reforming with transparency enshrined in their banking practice and government putting laws in place to ensure that this happens.
Please give some thought to the citizens in Britain who have to tackle a whopping 72.5 billion credit card debt.
HMM.
Unfortunatly they are not mistakes Peter. A large portion of Society live beyond there means and the Banks prey on this fact. They know Government or state bailouts come to the rescue in the event of a melt down. It is as TT points out the tip of a really nasty and corrupt system of greed, at the exspense of the rest of us. My best guess is we are not that far away from the next banking meltdown due to this mal practice not being stamped out..