YEREVAN, November 22. /ARKA/. The current world tendency of increase in interest rates will be seen also in Armenia sooner or later, HSBC Bank Armenia CEO Astrid Clifford said Tuesday at a news conference.

Answering ARKA News Agency’s question, she said that interest rates on loans would go up in the future, but found it difficult to forecast something applying to interests on deposits. She said they might rise as well, but not as high as lending interests.

Clifford said that interest rates are gradually going up not only due to world developments, but also to legislative reforms, which make banking activity more and more expensive. Therefore loans are increasingly becoming expensive.

HSBC Bank Armenia CEO also said that competition among Armenian banks continues – they attract businesses by downing interests on loans.

But the situation will change in the future, since world developments will surely impact things in Armenia and competition based on lowering interests will lessen.

According to the Central Bank of Armenia, an average interest rate on deposits in Armenian drams slipped 0.2 percentage points since the beginning of this year to 9.7% in late October, and interest rate on deposits in foreign currencies fell 0.4 points to 6.6%.

Interest rate on dram loans averaged 16.8% in October after falling 0.2 points since the beginning of this year, and interest rate on loans in foreign currencies dropped 0.8 points to 13.6%. -0-