Serbia's Consumer Loans Surge 28.4%, Repaid by 134,000

Consumer loans in Serbia were worth 29.65 billion dinars (about 253 million euros at an exchange rate of roughly 117 dinars to the euro) at the end of July 2026, up 28.4% from July of the previous year. No other category of debt grew faster in the July credit report from the Serbian Banking Association, even though consumer loans remain the smallest line item in household borrowing.

Total debt owed to banks by the economy, citizens and entrepreneurs stood at 4,701 billion dinars on July 31, roughly 4.7 trillion dinars or about 40 billion euros. A year earlier that sum was 15.6% smaller.

Households Are Borrowing Faster Than Businesses

The overall figure splits into three columns, and they are not growing at the same pace:

• corporate sector: 2,468 billion dinars (~21.1 billion euros), up 12.4%
• households: 2,131 billion dinars (~18.2 billion euros), up 19.7%
• entrepreneurs: 101.8 billion dinars (~869 million euros), up 14%

The gap between households and companies is 7.3 percentage points, meaning households are taking on debt about 1.6 times faster than firms. The corporate sector still carries the larger absolute amount, but the gap narrows every month: 2,468 billion dinars in corporate debt sits against 2,131 billion dinars in household debt, a ratio that has now fallen below 1.16 to 1.

Cash Loans Account for Half of Household Debt

The largest item on the household side remains the cash loan, on which banks are owed 1,046 billion dinars (~8.9 billion euros), up 20.8% from July 2025. That is 49.1% of total household debt, almost exactly half. Next come housing and renovation loans at 903.25 billion dinars (~7.7 billion euros), up 19.6%.

Agricultural loans stand at 101.97 billion dinars, up 9.2%, the slowest pace anywhere in the report, while other household loans add up to 50.31 billion dinars. Consumer loans, despite posting the fastest growth of all, make up just 1.4% of what households owe banks.

How Many Serbians Are Repaying a Consumer Loan?

The average debt per consumer-loan borrower in July was 221,440 dinars, about 1,890 euros. Dividing the total of 29.65 billion dinars by that average points to roughly 134,000 borrowers, fewer than one in every forty adult citizens. Because the base is small, each new loan shifts the average proportionally more than it would for cash loans, where the outstanding balance is forty times larger.

Delinquency Falls as Debt Rises

The share of overdue debt in total bank lending was 1.8%, down from 2.0% a year earlier. Delinquency is highest among entrepreneurs, at 3.3%, followed by legal entities at 2.4%, while households lag behind the least, at 1.1%. Current accounts numbered 9,405,781 at the end of July, with 6,127,140 users, of which 208,755 accounts, or 2.2% of the total, were overdue.

Alongside these figures, banks earlier this year rejected 310 requests for repayment relief, as we reported previously. The combination of rising debt and falling delinquency suggests borrowers are currently keeping up with their installments, but it also shows how little room is left for restructuring once an installment stops fitting a household’s budget.

More Cards, Fewer Cardholders

Credit cards in circulation numbered 1,115,039 on July 31, up 1.7% from a year earlier. The number of people using those cards fell 1.9% over the same period, to 855,832. That works out to 1.3 cards per user, so the growth in card numbers is not matched by growth in the circle of people using them. The next snapshot comes with the August report from the Credit Bureau of the Serbian Banking Association.