Deposits in Greece’s banking sector showed an increase of 1.04 billion euros in June, up from the corresponding month, with businesses trusting more of their cash to local banks, even as capital controls are still imposed in the country.
By T. Tsiros
Deposits in Greece’s banking sector showed an increase of 1.04 billion euros in June, up from the corresponding month, with businesses trusting more of their cash to local banks, even as capital controls are still imposed in the country.
According to reports, postponement of an income tax payment by legal entities resulted in an unforeseen surplus for the business sector. Additionally, last week loosening of capital controls, which now allow new deposits to remain outside the restrictions, appear to have slightly boosted confidence in the battered sector.
According to the Bank of Greece (BoG), June’s results covered much of the losses from fleeing capital over the previous months. Specifically, in December 2015 deposits by households and all types of businesses and legal entities totaled 123.377 billion euros, subsequently falling to 121.426 billion euros.
The negative trend was only reversed in May 2016.
Nevertheless, the current month coincides with the first payment of income taxes – for fiscal 2015 – which will be higher due to increases passed by the government in order to meet memorandum-mandated fiscal targets. Individual taxpayers, households and businesses are projected to fork over five billion euros in taxes in July 2016, a figure that corresponds to 4 percent of the total amount in bank deposits.
As per the 1.04 billion euros that found their way back to Greek banks in June 2016, the breakdown is 358 million coming from households and non-profit entities, and 761 million euros coming from businesses that are not credit institutions.
Conversely, the rate of borrowing / lending again fell in June 2016, with the annualized rate falling 2 percent, according to the BoG.