Baština (Jan 2019)
The position of Kraljevo's monetary institutes in the banking system of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Abstract
Banking business activity in Kraljevo stretches back from 1885, from the foundation of the Kraljevo's Shareholder Saving Bank and until the WWI three local monetary institutes were doing their business activity. Sufferings in the war and altered labour conditions caused that Kraljevo's Economic Bank for Commerce and Industry and Kraljevo's Shareholder Economic Bank carry out the fusion, and that new institute was called the Kraljevo's Economic Bank. During the first after war years, the institutes constantly increased their principal funds, and where in 1924 the third institute had been founded - the Kraljevo's Commercial Credit Institute, the possibility of the financing of city's economy was facilitated. In comparison with other centres in Serbia, Kraljevo's banks from collective point of view disposed of the least basic capital funds, but relations of the amount of capital funds as per the bank numbers makes us knowledgeable that Kraljevo's banks disposed of similar amounts of capital funds as the largest number of banks in other cities. In case we compare the amount of capital funds with the number of citizens, it is noticeable that the residents of Kraljevo disposed of more resources in comparison with the centres as Niš or Kragujevac. Although this data may point out at first sight greater possibility of Kraljevo's banks for the economic development of the place, it is the fact that all cities and towns, even the centres in Serbia, disposed with insufficient capital funds in order to be able to develop more intensively from economic point of view. The prosperity in the operation of Kraljevo's banks lasted until 1931 after that the banking crisis in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia disabled normal work of monetary institutes. The main clients of Kraljevo's banks were, starting from 1925, farmers so that the moratorium on the repayment of agricultural debts in 1932 paralyzed the work of banks. In that way Kraljevo's banks are found in the position as the largest number of the banks in the state, thus they were found under the protection as per the Regulation on the Protection of Monetary Institutes or their bailers or they reduced their business activity tithe repayment of old saving deposits.
