The Secretary of State for the Economy, Gonzalo García Andrés, asked the banks this Wednesday to "extremely monitor" the processes of granting aid to mortgage holders in trouble, just a few days after the Bank of Spain reported that only 10% of those who request them end up enjoying them.
"I want to ask the banking sector to be extremely diligent in the behavior of these operations," said García Andrés at a meeting of the financial sector organized by Deloitte and ABC, alluding to the new code of good practices, which expands the gaps and options of mortgage refinancing at incomes of less than 29,400 euros per year.
"Thanks to the good performance of employment and family income, the expansion of the code is not reaching the levels planned, but it is essential that the instrument is applied well and that all families that are eligible can have it," said the Secretary of state. The Government estimates that the new code covers one million families.
In its latest financial stability report, the Bank of Spain estimates that 42,800 mortgage holders have applied for aid from the code of good practices. They total a debt of 5,367 million, which is equivalent to 127,785 euros per mortgage holder.
However, 40% of the requests have been rejected, in 90% of cases for not meeting objective conditions, and so far only 10% of them have materialized into concrete measures.
García Andrés has not stopped there in his requests to the bank, confronted with the acting Government over the plan to extend the extraordinary tax agreed between the PSOE and Sumar over time. The tax, she has said, is justified "after seeing the results of the banks", and its impact "is moderate" when compared to the benefits.
"We have great needs to finance certain needs. That there is an equitable contribution between the business sector to sustain these needs seems very reasonable to me," he indicated.
The fronts don't stop there. He has also described as "important" that banks pass interest rate increases on to the profitability of deposits. "so that the impact on families is balanced." "The banks say they have no pressure," but individuals have 20,000 million euros invested in Treasury bills and already monopolize 30% of the issues, when a year ago it was 2%, he stated.
His prediction is that the increase in deposit remuneration "is a matter of time." "There is a differential element, which is competition between entities, which is key. If effective competition works, this has to be a matter of time."
