Banks in the Czech Republic have nearly divided the local market among themselves, according to experts, but many still attracted tens of thousands of new clients last year, a poll conducted by the Czech News Agency CTK shows.

Komercni banka (KB) was the most successful with 70,000 new clients, raising the overall number of its clients to 1.332 million. This put KB ahead of the number one bank in 2002 Ceska sporitelna which last year attracted 67,000 new clients and with the total number of 4.6 million customers is the largest domestic bank.

The amount of money that people and companies are depositing at banks is growing as well. According to the Czech National Bank (CNB), client deposits in Jan-Sep-2003grew by 58 billion crowns to 1,608 billion crowns against the end of 2002.

The volume of loans taken by people and companies from banks is growing even faster. Experts say that the loans and a subsequent household consumption is driving the whole economy. In Jan-Sep of 2003, domestic banks lent nearly 77 billion crowns more against 2002, 967.5 billion crowns in total.

(NewsBase 19.i.04)