The ministry said, in the wake of today's Croatian Banking Association (HUB) press release, that the HUB's proposals to improve the position of the most vulnerable category of debtors were rejected and that the ministry believed that its proposal was more favourable and more just for the debtors, given that the benefits would be proportional to the damage sustained.
The HUB said today that instead of repeating incorrect and blanket assessment on banking operations, discussions should focus on the concrete shortcomings of the latest bill of amendments.
The HUB said the bill would not bring relief to people with loans pegged to the Swiss franc but create an unequal treatment of debtors which, contrary to announcements, would not result in drastically lower annuities for a larger number of loan beneficiaries.
The ministry said the remaining capital in the domestic currency of most debtors with loans pegged to the Swiss franc, after six years of repayment, was higher than when they began repaying the loans.
The ministry said the bill of amendments prevented banks from further violating the Civil Obligations Act, and that changeable parameters in all loan contracts would have to be strictly defined and that changes to the interest rate would depend solely on parameter changeability, independently of any side's will.
In loan contracts in which a foreign currency's exchange rate has appreciated more than 20 per cent in relation to the Croatian kuna, the fixed margin cannot be higher than the difference between the initial interest rate and the initial changeable parameter, said the ministry.
The changes the bill brings will contribute to a more just and more balanced division of the market risk between debtor and creditor, preventing the debtor from taking on the entire risk as has been the case so far because of undefined obligations and non-transparent interest rate increases, the ministry added.