Good news for macroeconomy, but real economy still suffers

The Romanian state is starting the year with a lot of cash on its hands, i.e. 900 million euros from the IMF and another 2.5 billion euros set to come from the EU and the World Bank, while in the real economy private companies continue to make people redundant, close businesses and file for insolvency.

As a result, a growing discrepancy emerges between the abundance of cash in the coffers of the NBR (National Bank of Romania), of the state, and of the financial market on one hand, and the private sector on the other, which has been deprived of cash and orders for too long, and is unable to recover from the successive shocks it experienced last year.
Banks ended up stifled under the tens of billions of RON languishing on the market, with ROBOR interest rates freefalling in the first week of the year, while lending shows no sign of a rebound, with this money surplus failing to be directed towards the economy. In addition, the signal that the IMF gave external markets through the release of a new tranche reinforces the trend of RON strengthening and the Stock Exchange rise in the first week of the year, caught up in the illusion generated by the upcoming flotation of Fondul Proprietatea. Once again Romania risks to fall into the trap of believing what the "mirror" of financial markets says, which has no connection to the wave of insolvencies in the real economy.
However, even though the government has made efforts to repay some of its debts to the private sector under pressure from the IMF, for many companies it is already too late, especially if their banks ran out of patience.