Bank deposit and loan interest rates

In September 2002, the Bank of Greece (BoG) started collecting data on interest rates of bank deposits and loans on a new basis and in accordance with Governor’s Act 2688/24.5.2021 and the Regulation of the European Central Bank ECB/2001/18.

The new series of interest rates is updated on the 26th working day following the end of the reference month; it is available on this website and it is published in the Bulletin of Conjunctural Indicators (Table IV.24).

The series comprises euro deposit and loan interest rates (weighted averages). In addition to interest rates of specific categories of deposits and loans the Bank also publishes overall averages of total euro deposits and loans as well as the interest rate spread between loans and deposits.

Data on the volume of new business and outstanding amounts for deposits and loans accompany the data on interest rates (Tables 1a and 1b).

Volume data, as reported by each institution, are used as weights in the calculation of the various weighted average rates for Greece. The overall volume data of Tables 1a and 1b are used by the ECB as weights for the Greek interest rates when calculating the corresponding euro area interest rates.

It should be noted that data of Table 2a should not be used for calculating credit growth since they do not include loans in non-euro currencies but they include loans granted by domestic credit institutions to Eurozone residents other than the residents of Greece.

It is well known that researchers are interested in long historical series. For this reason the European Central Bank in co-operation with the Bank of Greece, calculated statistical estimates οf interest rates for the period prior to September 2002. These historical estimates go back to 1980 (Table 3). It should be emphasised that these estimates are ‘theoretical interest rates’ that can be used in econometric models but do not portray actual historical data on deposit and lending rates that existed in the Greek market over the period 1980-2002. The Bank of Greece did, of course, collect information on bank interest rates during this period. These actually collected rates (Table 4) refer to different deposit and lending categories from the ones presently used. More information on the collection method of the new series of interest rates and how they are related to the pre-2002 rates can be found in the attached “Methodological Note”.

This website uses cookies for the optimization of your user experience. Learn More
I Accept