On Tuesday in Brussels, the European Commission and the IMF will discuss with the main foreign banks in Romania again to request them to keep and even strengthen their commitment to maintain financing as undertaken in Vienna at the end of March.
Well over a month later, banks are not showing signs of being ready to resume lending, and are delaying interest cuts, although the NBR is freeing up some cash of their minimum mandatory reserves.
Until March 31 at least, foreign banks mostly withdrew money from Romania rather than boost financing to alleviate the effects of the crisis.
The Greek groups, which control 30% of the market through Alpha Bank, Bancpost, Banca Romaneasca, Piraeus Bank and ATE Bank, took out no less than 1.64 billion euros from September 2008 through March 2009, according to data presented by Eugen Dijmarescu, NBR vice-governor. The Austrians, with their 24% share of the market held through Erste, Raiffeisen, Volksbank and UniCredit Tiriac, withdrew 652 million euros. On the other hand, French Societe Generale group granted BRD additional financing of 722 million euros. The withdrawals operated by the main foreign groups amounted to almost 2.3 billion euros, while new financing only to 918 million euros.
"The advantages of the funding supplied by the central banks in the countries of origin are barely visible in the increase in the financial resources of the branches in Romania," Dijmarescu says.
The agenda in Brussels also includes the necessary capital increases of the biggest banks in Romania based the stress test conducted by the NBR, with the total currently estimated at up to one billion euros.
Dominic Bruynseels, CEO of BCR, says his bank may need a capital increase, too, once the National Bank has raised the minimum solvency requirement from 8% to 10%.
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