Few Hungarians have opted to repay their foreign currency-denominated mortgages at a fixed rate under a government assistance programme launched a month ago, business daily Vilaggazdasag said on Monday.
Vilaggazdasag asked eight big banks how many borrowers had joined the programme. The number added up to less than 2,300.
The assistance programme, launched on August 19, fixes the exchange rate for repayments on the loans and puts the difference between the fixed rate and the market rate on a separate forint account to be repaid later. The programme’s rate for Swiss franc-based loans – once the most popular lending product in Hungary – is 180 forints to the franc, well under the market rate of around 239 early Monday.