Central banker wants conversion of car loans

Foreign-exchange car purchase loans and personal loans should be converted into forint debt to eliminate the exchange rate risk from the financial system, managing director of the National Bank of Hungary (NBH) Márton Nagy has told Hungarian weekly Heti Válasz. NBH was in favour, he said. “Together with the foreign-currency-based personal loans, this is a loan stock of HUF 500 billion, for close to 290,000 contracts.” Hungary has already implemented a conversion of households’ foreign-currency mortgages this year to the tune of almost HUF 3,000 billion, most of which were denominated in Swiss francs.