Greek banks raise lending, deposit interest rates

Commercial banks in Greece began raising their lending and deposit interest rates, a few days after European Central Bank raised its base lending rate by 0.25 pct, pushing the 12-month Euribor rate above 2.0 pct.

Millennium bank on Tuesday announced it was raising its lending and deposit interest rates from Thursday 14, April by half a percentage point, while Hellenic Bank announced it was raising its lending rates by as much as 0.50 percent.

The National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce on Monday said a decision by ECB to raise interest rates by 0.25 pct in the Eurozone would burden Greek small and large enterprises by around 348 million euros annually and warned that this figure could triple to around 1.02 billion euros if the worst scenario was confirmed (successive interest rate increases of up to 0.75 pct this year). The Confederation said the households’ debt burden would total 293 million euro, a figure that could rise to 879 million euro under the worst case scenario, further hitting a current weak demand in the market.