470,000 Loans, 380 Billion Dinars: NBS Program Ends

Serbia’s central bank approved more than 470,000 loans worth a combined 380 billion dinars for lower income citizens by the end of July, at interest rates below the standard offers of commercial banks. The National Bank of Serbia shared the figures with N1 ahead of the expiration of a program that had applied for one year to cash, consumer and housing loans.

The measure took effect on September 15, 2025, and ran for exactly one year. Sources differ on the exact end date: Nova ekonomija and N1 both cite September 15 and September 16, 2026 in the same report, while the portal 021 cites only September 15. Regardless of the precise date, banks are no longer bound by the interest rate cap that applied to this category of borrowers for the past year.

Employed people and pensioners with monthly incomes up to 100,000 dinars qualified for the lower rate, though individual banks could raise that threshold as a business decision. Refinancing accounted for 72 percent of the total value of approved loans, according to the National Bank of Serbia, with new cash loans making up the remaining 26 percent.

What the interest rates looked like

Under the program, cash loan rates could not exceed 7.5 percent, and Postal Savings Bank offered rates as low as 5.99 percent. Refinancing loans mostly ranged from 6.9 to 7.5 percent. For housing loans, the measure cut rates by 0.5 percentage points from what a given bank charged in July 2025: fixed or mixed rates came to 4 to 4.5 percent, and variable rates to 2.25 to 2.50 percent, on top of the three or six month Euribor.

How much did citizens save

The National Bank of Serbia also gave N1 an estimate of the longer term savings.

“The National Bank of Serbia estimates that savings for citizens on cash and consumer loans under this program will reach up to 40 billion dinars over the next five years, with savings in the first year of repayment alone reaching up to 12 billion dinars.”

For an individual loan, the monthly payment on a cash loan approved under the program was up to 16 percent lower than some banks’ standard offers, with total savings over the full repayment period exceeding 200,000 dinars. For housing loans, the difference is smaller as a percentage of the payment but larger in absolute terms.

“The payment on an individual housing loan under the lower interest rate would be up to six percent lower than the payment under the rate some banks were offering when the measure was announced, meaning savings over the full repayment period would exceed 9,000 euros.”

What happens after it expires

The program’s expiration comes as the Euribor reference rate, which variable rate housing loans are pegged to, has been rising in recent months, a trend Srpske Novine reported on earlier in connection with higher payments on a 100,000 euro loan. While the National Bank of Serbia’s measure held down the rate ceiling for one group of borrowers for a year, the Euribor’s current trajectory now works in the opposite direction for all variable rate housing loan holders, regardless of income.

Now that the program has ended, banks are once again free to set their own interest rates on cash, consumer and housing loans for citizens earning up to 100,000 dinars a month, within the general rules protecting financial service users. Whether any bank chooses to keep offering a lower rate to this category of clients will depend on its own business decision, as was already the case with part of Postal Savings Bank’s offer before the measure was introduced.