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Bulgarians Most Often Borrow Money from Relatives

"When Bulgarians need cash, they most often borrow money from their relatives. Forty-nine percent of the Bulgarians say that whenever they need money, they ask a relative to lend them some; only 28,3% of the polled Bulgarians say that they draw bank loans when they need fresh finances and 27,8% say that when they need money, they borrow from their friends," said Antoniya Gogova, Head of the Research Department of the GFK Bulgaria - Market Research Institute. GfK Bulgaria is a leading company in the field of market research in Bulgaria that offers to its clients a full set of marketing and sociological instruments.
And although most of the Bulgarians prefer borrowing money from relatives and friends, over the past five years the banks have registered a steady increase in the number of granted loans to private persons. GFK's data show that nine percent of the Bulgarian citizens used bank loans last year, as against only four percent in 2002. In terms of drawn loans Bulgaria ranks next to the last in Central and East Europe before the Czech Republic, where only eight percent of the people use bank loans.
Almost a third of the polled Bulgarians (29,6%) say they will do without a loan; 28,9% say they do not like being in debt and for this reason they do not draw loans. Only three percent of the polled citizens say they practically live on loans.
Over sixty percent of the pollees say that their family will not be able to save any money this year and only 6.2% are of the opposite opinion.
Still, 43,3% of the Bulgarians over fifteen years of age used the services of at least one bank over the first nine months of the year, whereas over the same period of 2002 21,6% of the Bulgarians used banking services.
Only thirty-three percent of the Bulgarians bought home insurances last year. Against this index we are ahead of Romania (28%), Serbia (11%) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (4%); however, only four percent of the Bul