For its director, Bárbara Mainzer, private credit as a percentage of the product is 27.4% in Uruguay, far from the world average.
The executive director of the Association of Private Banks of Uruguay (ABPU), Bárbara Mainzer, affirmed that “there is no over-indebtedness problem” in the country, based on statistics from the World Bank, that show that private credit as a percentage of the product is 27.4% in Uruguay, while that percentage reaches 145% if the global average is analyzed.
Although he admitted that “indebtedness is a problem”, Mainzer He maintained in dialogue with Teledoce that “the solution is not easy or obvious.” In any case, he dismissed the lack of complete statistics, speaking out against the clearing of reports, which states that one million people in the last ten years had some kind of non-compliance. He in equal measure questioned the report of the Uruguayan Banking Association (AEBU), which recorded 668,813 unrecoverable debtors, mainly young men.
For the director of the ABPU, “There is no problem of over-indebtedness” in Uruguay and, after focusing on the statistics of the World Bank, highlighted: “We are far below, except for Argentina, from all other countries in the region. far below Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica and Paraguay”.
On this point, he indicated that “there is no problem of generalized over-indebtedness” and contrasted that what exists are “specific cases of families or companies”, but he insisted that “it is not like that at the macro level”. In any case, he recognized that indebtedness is an issue to attend to and stated that the solution “is not easy or obvious, because it is an issue that worries people and, if not, it would have already been resolved”, when pronouncing his objections. on the debt restructuring project being analyzed by Parliament.
He questioned that the debtor statistics are incomplete
With respect to the statistics, he considered that “part of the problem is that they are incomplete.” At that point, he indicated that the clearing of reports “says that a million people in the last ten years had some kind of non-compliance.” enter a person who “paid the telephone bill late or who owes a fee of 100 pesos”. On this point, he specified that “there is a very heterogeneous base”, which includes people “with complicated chronic indebtedness” and people who ” Something happened to him nine years ago and maybe not today.”
He also ruled on the figure that shows that there are more than 600,000 people classified as irrecoverable debtors. It is that, according to a report of the Administrative Technical Commission of AEBU, in Uruguay 71% have a credit in the formal financial system and there are 690,000 people who have “problematic” debts. On this point, he considered that “the solution is education.”
“First of all, one has to be clear about what one is in debt for. It is one thing to take credit to buy a house or start a business. Another very different thing is that it is for a pair of shoes,” he said. Mainzer and put the axis in financial education. “The first antidote is to make informed decisions,” he insisted.
Lastly, he referred to operating costs and late payment costs. “Operating costs in Uruguay They are high due to salary, security and regulation issues”, he pointed out, although he contrasted that “the default is very low”. “Consumer credit is almost 3% and in financial institutions the average is above 20%,” she graphed.
Source: Ambito
