Poles among Europe’s least likely to borrow – report

Research done by a leading worldwide brand research consultancy, Millward Brown, has indicated that consumers in other European countries, including Italy, Romania, Germany and Spain, are significantly more likely to seek credit for major purchases. The report claimed that only 18 percent of Polish citizens surveyed were planning on taking out a loan within the coming year. In contrast, 33 percent of Romanians and 22 percent of Italians stated that they would borrow for purchases of items that included homes, cars and appliances. The research was based on surveys conducted with 7,000 Poles, and with 1,000 people in various other European countries, and was not age-specific. “Our [low level of] borrowing may be the result of [relative] wealth of [our] society…few of us can afford regular savings, that’s why a lot of us [already have] a debt,” Brown’s Polish branch Public Relations specialist, Angieszka Salach, said in the release. The most common reasons for Poles taking out loans were for housing (56 percent of those borrowing in the next year), for buying a car (23 percent) and for purchasing household appliances (25 percent), according to the survey. Household appliances were the one area where the percentage of Poles borrowing was actually higher than for those from other European nations, the survey indicated.