"Giorgi Vashadze's opinion that the interest rate can be reduced to 20% does not coincide with any parameters we have in the country today," expert Paata Bairakhtari told TV-program Business Morning.
Paata Bairakhtari, vice-president of the Association of Young Financiers and Businessmen, believes that politicians still use the pension issue to win the hearts of the electorate and often make superficial statements, which create misconceptions among citizens.
"When we talk about interest rates, we have to consider nominal or effective interest rates. Mr. Giorgi is talking about an effective interest rate. If the effective interest rate falls below 20%, then the nominal interest rate must be reduced to around 10%, so that all other expenditures must not exceed 20%. I declare with full responsibility that as of today, there is no similar type of loan issued in GEL in Georgian banking sector, which will be below 10%. On top of that the National Bank has raised its refinancing rate to 10.5%. Therefore, Mr. Vashadze's opinion on this issue simply contradicts all the parameters that we have in the country today," – the expert said.
Paata Bairakhtari emphasizes that even when the secured loans in the country are issued at an interest rate of about 14-15%, it is impossible to issue a short-term loan based on a pension at 10%.
"Pension loan is an unsecured product, which is a short-term loan. This product is one of the most expensive loans on the market. As for the statement that pension loan is a secured loan is a lie, supposedly someone could not technically figure it out and we are dealing with some ignorance. A secured loan means that a loan is secured by a specific asset, land or building. Pension, salary or other income cannot be considered as collateral. What politicians are talking about is a source of income on which credit is approved. The source of income cannot be considered as a type of collateral," Bairakhtar said.
In addition, Paata Bairakhtari does not agree with the opinion that Liberty Bank is a monopolist on the market by pension loans.
"We requested the data and major part of pensionaries have four times more loans borrowed from another commercial bank. We cannot speak about exclusivity of Liberty Bank, as we have official statistics on that. It is not clear why politicians, including Giorgi Vashadze, are talking about this topic”, Bairakhtari explained.
