What does IMF think needs to be done on banking, insurance and capital markets?

Improvement of the people's access to financial services, increasing banks' capital and changes in the insurance and capital market legislation are the main steps the regulatory authorities should be working on over the coming period, reveals an assessment report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The report comes after IMF's assessment visit to Romania, which resulted in the release of two 2.3 billion-euro tranches of the stand-by agreement signed last year. The IMF officials say that although the Romanians' access to financial services has improved over the last five years, a significant part of them is still without access to such services. They use the low share of private lending in the Gross Domestic Product, about 39%, as an argument. In many European countries, the loans exceed GDP.
Analysts say that despite the decline in people's incomes and companies' revenues lately, IMF's argument is valid and can be taken into account on long term.
One of the solutions to increase access to financial services would be development of governmental programmes to provide guarantees for loans in rural areas and for small and medium-sized enterprises.