Banks in Macedonia keep getting bigger, and loans are growing faster than the money citizens and companies are saving. According to the latest National Bank data, total loans in August were 13.6 percent higher than in the same month last year, while deposits were up 9 percent. Loans are already above 9.7 billion euros, deposits around 11.1 billion. The gap in growth is 4.6 percentage points - and it's persisting.

For households, the picture is two-sided. Household deposits grew 10.2 percent year on year, but in August alone they fell 0.4 percent compared to July. At the same time, household loans are growing 12.3 percent a year. Consumer loans by 12.2 percent, and housing loans by as much as 16.2 percent.

Companies are moving even faster. Their loans grew 15.1 percent in a year, more than twice as fast as their deposits, which are up 6.1 percent. All of the growth in corporate lending in August was in denars. Total bank assets reached 15.5 billion euros at the end of June, around 1.5 billion more than a year earlier.

What are those loans buying?

The question isn't whether the banks are liquid - the deposit base is still larger than the loan book, and the system has other sources of funding too. The question is what this growth actually produces. A loan for a machine means production, exports, jobs. A consumer loan means spending today a salary that will be earned over the coming years.

Housing loans are a story of their own. Growth of 16.2 percent doesn't mean 16 percent more flats are being bought. If flats are getting more expensive, the same flat simply needs a bigger loan. In that case, a figure that looks like prosperity may just be the same flat, paid off with a longer instalment plan.

Bank balance sheets grow month after month. Whether family budgets are growing the same way is not something the monthly statement on monetary developments tells you. And it's exactly that number - how much of a salary goes on instalments - that every household feels at the end of the month.