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Business sector debt decreased by about 0.7 percent to around NIS 787 billion in September. Households' debt increased in September by about 0.6 percent, to about NIS 383 billion.
The business sector's outstanding debt
· The total outstanding debt of the business sector decreased in September by about NIS 5.2 billion to about NIS 787 billion.
· The decline derived primarily from the effect of appreciation of the shekel against the dollar; net repayments totaled only around NIS 0.3 billion—bank loan repayments of about NIS 1.6 billion were partially offset by net issuance of bonds.
· In October, the business sector (excluding banks and insurance companies) issued about NIS 1 billion of bonds, all of which were tradable. The bond issuance figure is below the monthly average since the beginning of the year—about NIS 2.3 billion a month through September.
Households' debt
· Households' outstanding debt in September was NIS 383 billion. The balance of housing debt increased by about NIS 1.8 billion (0.7 percent), and at the end of September stood at NIS 274 billion. Since the beginning of 2012, outstanding housing debt has increased by NIS 15.7 billion (6.1 percent).
· New mortgages taken out in October totaled about NIS 3.4 billion, compared to NIS 3.4 billion in September. The figure for October is lower than the average per month (NIS 3.8 billion) since the beginning of the year. This may be attributed to the fewer business days during the month.
The cost of the debt
· The spread between interest on credit and interest on indexed deposits increased by about 0.2 percentage points in September, due to a decline in the interest rate on indexed deposits.
· There was a decline of 0.3 percentage points in the spread between the yield on indexed corporate bonds—measured by the Tel-Bond 60 Index—and average yields on indexed government bonds, reaching 2.9 percentage points at the end of September. There has been a cumulative increase of 0.4 percentage points in this spread in the past 12 months.
· The average interest rates on new unindexed mortgages and on new CPI-indexed mortgages were unchanged.
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