For the time being, CEC should remain a savings bank under the total guarantee of the state and it should work with the population and less with legal persons, while placements should be made in a limited number of instruments, mostly in government bonds.
The FNI-SOV Invest case, together with all previous placements lost in troubled banks or banks on the verge of bankruptcy, clearly showed that CEC's involvement in other activities lamentably failed and endangered the most important savings instrument for the largest part of the population.
"All countries worldwide have savings banks. They generally have the state's guarantee and address small and less wealthy depositors who in exchange of a total guarantee accept interest rates that are even smaller than those of solid banks. I think that turning CEC into a bank, as the World Bank requires, would be a mistake. In my opinion, CEC should continue to be what it was meant to be 145 years ago and should address, as I have said before, small depositors," stated Bogdan Baltazar, BRD-SocGen chairman.
Limiting CEC operations and introducing some strict placement rules is absolutely necessary in order to avoid involvement in doubtful affairs and to limit the influence of the political factor over its management.
"CEC must benefit from a limited number of placement instruments and these must include a minimal risk degree. I am talking about government bonds, deposits with banks enjoying special creditworthiness. Why should CEC need to develop foreign currency operations? These are sophisticated and hard to control," Baltazar also says.
CEC was included under the PSAL 2 agreement with the World Bank and it also constituted an IMF requisite for the privatisation process. At this moment, the opportunity of CEC privatisation has to be taken into discussion, to see if this is the best possible option, since the state is not ready to face certain economic crises by surveying financial markets.
On the other hand, the current president of CEC Ion Ghica considers that, given the current conditions on the financial banking market, the ideal solution for the institution he runs is "privatisation," although he accepts that there is a tradition throughout the world, according to which savings banks, as CEC considers itself, should remain within the state's ownership.
The president of the Romanian Banking Association, Radu Ghetea, does not believe that CEC privatisation would be a problem, but this only if the entire banking system were privatised.
"I don't believe that it will be bad if the entire Romanian banking system were privatised. We want it to be a healthy system and its health is not necessarily secured by shareholders, who play however an important role. Privatisation should insure funds and effectiveness in the management of the company. So far, CEC has had a strange statute and the current management has the capacity to clearly show what the situation is and which perspective would be best," said Radu Ghetea who is also the prime - vice-president of Alpha Bank Romania.
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