Steven van Groningen, head of the Raiffeisen Bank, the seventhleading local bank, says he has been seeing an increase in demandfrom companies and expects it to be the growth driver for thelending business for the rest of the year.
"Demand for corporate loans has been rising, I expect the SMEsegment to follow. As for individuals, we are constantly sellingabove the repayment level, which is a good sign, considering therather low confidence of consumers in the economy," Steven vanGroningen told ZF.
At the end of September Raiffeisen was seventh among localbanks, with 19.2 billion RON (4.5 billion euros) in assets. Thebank has an about two million-client portfolio.
Corporate lending was the only one that moved last year, too,though only the foreign currency part of it, with the funding inRON remaining low. On the retail side of business, the "First Home"scheme drove the stock of mortgage loans up, but sales slowed downtowards the end of the year.
Bankers begin the year moderately optimistic, the same as theforecasts that point to resumption of economic growth, which willbe modest, though, as the Gross Domestic Product will go up byabout 1% after two years of decline in a row.
Cătălin Pârvu, head of Piraeus Bank, told ZF in a recentinterview that he expected a slight increase in lending partlyfuelled by the need of banks to expand their revenue base to copewith provision expenses, which are still high. Because of themodest economic growth, Pârvu, too, expected lending to only see aone-digit growth, doubting feasibility of plans of some players tospeed up to two-digit growth.
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