(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Bank rates in the country continue to remain low, while data show that credit card loans carried margins exceeding an incredible 10 percent early this year.
Interest rates on bank loans remain much higher than deposit rates, Qatar Central Bank (QCB) figures show.
Savings bank deposits carry dismally low interest rates of less than a percent: 0.73 percent annually, in fact.
This means that if one leaves QR1,000 in one's savings bank account in a Qatari bank for a year one would get a paltry QR7.30 in interest.
The interest rate on savings deposits was 0.93 percent a little over two years ago, in April 2013, and it has gradually been sliding ever since.
The situation with time deposits - for a month, three months, six months and for a year - remain equally low, ranging from 1.25 to 1.44 percent. According to QCB data released in its bulletin for April 2015, deposits for tenures exceeding a year carry no charm either in terms of interest to be earned.
The rates remained at 1.60 percent in April of this year, having come down from 2.70 percent two years earlier.
The cost of borrowing, on the other hand, remains quite high as compared to deposit rates.
Credit card loans were the most expensive at least in March and April of this year, ruling at 10.04 and 10.54 percent, respectively.
They were actually lower two years earlier, in April of 2013 - at 8.36 percent. By October last year, the rates went up and breached the nine percent level. It was 9.81 percent then. Car loans carried an average 4.51 percent interest by April this year, down from 5.34 percent in April of 2013.
As instructed by the QCB in late 2011, interest on consumer (personal) loans were more or less under-six percent - between five and six percent, actually.
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