The Slovak Banking Association (SBA) says that banks in Slovakia paid the highest bank levies among EU members last year. The Association has also warned that unless levies are reduced, both company loans and the process of creating capital bank reserves will be at great risk. “For every one million euro in bank assets, Slovak banks have had to pay €3,059 in levies. That's 10 times more than the EU average. For instance, German banks paid only €92, British €185 and Hungarian €596 per every million of assets," said SBA analyst Marcel Laznia.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also agrees that banking the levies is too high and therefore might endanger the provision of loans for selected market sectors. According to the Finance Ministry however, the bank levy is not responsible for the drop in profits. “We'd like to remind the SBA that according to the Slovak Central Bank (NBS) it wasn't the banking levies which contributed most significantly toward the year-on-year drop in profitability of the banking sector, but rather the growth in expenditures on credit risks as well as the growth in retail deposit costs along with the drop in profitability of company loans,” said Finance Ministry spokesman Radko Kuruc. Such bank levies have so far been introduced in 15 EU member states.
