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Romanian Bks Unaffected By Intl Crisis, On Careful Supervision – Official

All Romanian banks are carefully supervised, and they face no problems, Petru Rares, president and general manager of Romanian Banking Institute IBR, said Thursday in a press conference, speaking about the effects of the international financial crisis.
Romanian Bks Unaffected By Intl Crisis, On Careful Supervision - Official
09 oct. 2008, 14:04, English

"No bank has problems due to the very careful supervision. We used to complain about National Bank of Romania’s controls. I do not complain anymore", Rares said.

Officials, bankers and analysts consider that the local market will only experience the indirect effects of the crisis that will not jeopardize the stability of the Romanian financial-banking sector, an IBR statement said.

IBR president said that analysts and rating agencies recently associated Romania with a group of countries including the Baltic States and Bulgaria, but the local market is “an entirely specific one".

Rares mainly pointed out the fact that Romania continues to grow with an unprecedented rate despite the economic crisis.

In the first half of the year, Romania’s economic growth was at 8.8%, while government estimates the GDP growth will be between 8.5% and 9.1% for the entire year.

The IBR representative also emphasized that the banks observe central bank’s norms. But in the case of a credit crunch, the central bank might loose some of the norms to provide liquidity into the banking system.

"We have overliquidity. The banks’ capitalization is solid. Romania’s foreign currency reserve, worth EUR26 billion, is huge compared with the GDP," Rares stated.

According to the new regulations set up by the central bank regarding loans for natural persons, banks will compute the indebtedness level based on maximum 20% higher incomes than those declared by the respective person at the Revenue Agency for the previous year.

Moreover, Romanian banks continue their development plans, targeting to open several hundreds units and hiring personnel, the IBR release reads.

Romanian banks currently employ over 70,000 people, and in the last two years, over 13,000 new, inexperienced employees entered the system due to the workforce deficit.