As Novac/Andrea Koscec writes, since the beginning of the pandemic, every fifth respondent in Croatia has been forced to borrow money. Working with that very same figure, every fifth person was also rendered unable to pay back the debts they’d incurred/
The above information about the financial issues suffered by Croatian citizens during the pandemic was showcased by COVID-19 inspired financial research conducted in European countries by the company EOS Matrix.
According to the survey, Croatian citizens or residents most often had to borrow money in order to just meet their daily needs – to finance their current living expenses (69 percent), housing costs (30 percent) and healthcare costs (23 percent).
”From the attitudes of Croatian citizens about borrowing money, we can conclude that the coronavirus crisis will have a longer-lasting effect on the financial situation of people and the weakening of the national economy,” noted the director of EOS Matrix, Barbara Cerinski.
The survey showed that most Croatian citizens or residents gave up investing in renovation (45 percent), buying furniture (31 percent) and spending money on trips and holidays (25 percent), the same could be said for spending on healthcare (14 percent) or education (11 percent).
At the wider European level, it is evident that individual countries have been and continue to be quite differently exposed to the consequences of the ongoing pandemic – while in Croatia, 19 percent of consumers are indebted financially, in Germany that figure stands at 12 percent, in Spain 15 percent, and in Romania as much as 28 percent, with 32 percent of people in Bulgaria in the same boat as a result of the global public health crisis.
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