ECIKS - Archives - Key facts about Kosovo Economy

Over the past four years Kosovo's financial sector has been built on completely new foundations. The Banking and Payments Authority of Kosovo (BPK), established in November 1999, is an independent body which successfully regulates the banking and insurance sectors.

All of Kosovo's banks are now private, some of them foreign-owned. There are seven registered banks, ten Savings and Credit Associations, twelve micro-finance institutions, four other non-banking financial institutions and eight insurance companies. The Pro Credit Bank(www.procreditbank-kos.com), established upon the initiative of several leading International Financial Institutions, and the Raiffeisen Bank of Austria have the largest market share in Kosovo. Local banks licensed by the BPK include the New Bank of Kosovo, the Bank for Private Business, the Economic Bank, the Credit Bank of Pristina and the Kasabank, which all offer similar banking services (see page 47 for the contact details of these banks).

The banking sector is growing quickly. According to the World Bank, there has been a rapid increase in loans and deposits as a percentage of GDP in the past few years. The number of inter-bank operations was multiplied by ten between 2001 and 2002, and doubled in 2003. The ratio of bank operations to assets was multiplied by eight, from 0.33 in 2001 to 2.67 at the end of 2003.

Source: ECIKS / MTI - Ministry of Trade and Industry