A report by the Deposit Insurance Agency shows 55 percent of the total amount of deposits in Albania belongs to only four percent of depositors
TIRANA, June 21 – The majority of savings in the Albanian banking system are owned by only a few thousand people– an indicator showing the gap between the poor and the rich is growing wider. This is confirmed by recent data by the Deposit Insurance Agency unveiled in a report at the parliamentary economy committee this week. The report shows 55 percent of the total amount of deposits in Albania belongs to only four percent of depositors.
Data published by the Agency show total savings in 2010 reached 635 billion lek (USD 6.35 billion), of which 350 billion lek is owned by only 63,000 people. Meanwhile, the remaining 286 billion lek is owned by 1.4 million people.
Silvana Sejko, the director of the Deposit Insurance Agency said 96 percent of individuals have their deposits up to 2.5 million lek, making them fully covered by the agency’s insurance scheme.
The Agency says deposits continued their growth in 2010 despite the ongoing financial crisis, increasing by 18 percent– indicating the public’s confidence in the Albanian banking sector.
As elsewhere in the region, Albanian banks witnessed substantial panic deposit withdrawals in the face of spillovers from instability of global financial markets, which were compounded by concerns about the health of the Greek banking system in the fall of 2008. Ample liquidity buffers were utilized to meet deposit withdrawals. To boost confidence, deposit insurance limits were raised fivefold to 2.5 million lek (25,000 US dollars), and deposits started to recover from the second half of 2009. Stress tests assessing key risks suggest that the banking system had sufficient buffers to weather the expected downturn.
