An entire country stressed out over the RON/EUR exchange rate and the high interests is keeping an eye on the NBR today, where the first monetary policy meeting of the Board of Governors is to be held after the conclusion of the talks with the IMF for the almost 20 billion-euro financial package.
This meeting will tell us what effects the agreement with the Fund and the talks with the foreign banks will have on the NBR's policy in terms of interests on RON, of the interventions on the forex market for the RON and of the relaxation of the regulations set for banks in order to restart lending.
Part of the money from the Fund is to be used precisely for avoiding new episodes of dangerous depreciation of the RON, but also to start a mechanism to resume lending, with the NBR holding the levers to doing it.
More than four million Romanians and their families have been hit hard by the increase in loan instalments over the last few months, either because of the sharp depreciation of the RON, or because of the increase in the interest rates on RON, and are now waiting for a breath of fresh air.
Now that the NBR has become a multi-billion-RON lender of the banking system, the interest rate decisions of the Board of Governors are carrying more weight, even though what really matters for the market is the Lombard loan rate (14% at the moment), and not the monetary policy rate (10%), which rather benefited the Finance Ministry, helped by the NBR so as to be able to borrow at lower costs from banks.
The prospect of several billions of euros coming from the IMF to NBR's vaults is already pushing the euro downwards, which reached the low of the last two months yesterday, 4.2392 RON.
The banking analysts who met with governor Mugur Isarescu on Friday say that it is too early to talk about a cut of the NBR rate or of the minimum mandatory reserves, which account for a lot of the cost of loans especially of those in euros. Also true is that the economy slowdown can be easily seen and companies badly need loans.
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