Banks in the Czech Republic raised credit cards numbers by 87.7% to 700,000 in 2005, bank statistics reveal. Ceska Sporitelna remained the biggest credit card issuer with 340,000 registered cards as of the end of 2005, an increase of 66% year on year. Komercni Banka credit cards grew by 89% to 125,000 but the bank lost its position as the second biggest credit card issuer due to GE Money Bank. GE booked the fastest growth in 2005, registering 137,000 credit cards, which represented more than a sevenfold increase. Credit cards are one of the fastest-growing forms of household debt, which amounted to almost 420 billion kuna (14.6 billion euros) at the end of 2005. Rapid expansion in credit card registration is set to continue in 2006.
Investors demonstrated heavy demand at a seven-week T-bills liquidity auction organised by the Hungarian State Debt Management Agency. Total valid bids amounted to 154 billion forints against the AgencyÕs 30 billion forint offer. The average yield at the auction stood at 5.98%, with the range of accepted bids varying between 5.80% and 5.99%. The last liquidity auction was on January 9th and the average yield at that tender stood at 5.97%. The next auction is a 35 billion forint offer in three-month T-bills, which will be organised today.
The Polish finance ministry sold all 52-week Treasury bills worth 1 billion zloty offered at yesterdayÕs auction organised on behalf of the National Bank of Poland. Investor demand for the papers was 1.6 billion zloty. Average yield was 3.788% and the minimum price was 9,627.21 zloty. The next auction is scheduled for Wednesday, when the Finance Ministry will offer 1.5 billion zloty in Treasury bonds from the WS0922 series. The last time the ministry offered WS0922 bonds was in September 2005, when the whole 1 billion zloty offer was sold. InvestorsÕ demand reached 3.14 billion zloty.