RON flood on interbank market helps state borrow cheaper, hurts depositors
RON flood on the currency market considerably cheapened the
state's borrowings in January, and bankers also started revising
the "lavish" interest rates paid for clients' deposits, which
dropped by as much as one percentage point. Instead, nobody is
speaking about cheaper loans for private sector clients, with
bankers preferring to thus fatten their profit margins.
The tone of optimism with which international market investors
started the year translated in Bucharest in falling yields at which
the state manages to place its certificates and bonds, which went
below the 7% per annum threshold after a long break. For one-year
treasury certificates, the yield dropped by a third of a percentage
point to 6.69% per annum.
For people keeping their savings with banks, though, January
brought no positive news: bankers resumed interest rate cuts, so
that most players now placed their offers in the range of 5-7% per
annum for RON deposits, including thus NBR's benchmark rate of
6.25% per annum.