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Financial & Banking
IFC invests in Romania’s first cover bond issue to increase mortgage lending
Monday, May 20, 2019
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, was a key investor with a EUR 50 million investment in the first covered bond issuance in Romania. The first-ever and five-year maturity covered bond will support the development of the capital markets and pave the way for other issuers to use a new financial instrument to provide long-term financing in Romania. Covered bonds are a critical tool for mortgage lending in more developed markets as it allows mortgage ...
OTP Bank Romania releases financial results for the first quarter of 2019
Monday, May 20, 2019
OTP Group has announced the financial results for the first quarter of 2019. According to the report published in Budapest, which presents the consolidated results adjusted in accordance with the Group´s standards, OTP Bank Romania has registered an after -tax profit of RON 18,3 million (HUF 1,23 billion). The quarterly profit level is 19% under the result registered in the first quarter of 2018. The Bank reported a 29% increase for operating ...
BR Analysis. Loans become more expensive this year in Romania eroding purchasing power, profits
Monday, May 20, 2019
Romanian business environment and households are hit by surging borrowing costs as interest rates rose quickly during the first three months of this year, despite government’s measures aiming to cap borrowing costs, eroding the profits of companies and the purchasing power of indebted persons. Fresh central bank data suggest that government’s measures like “greed tax” had no effect on real interest ...
Alpha Bank successfully places its first ever EUR 200 mln covered bond issue in Romania
Monday, May 20, 2019
Alpha Bank Romania has successfully placed its EUR 200 million euro-denominated covered bond issue, the first ever from a Romanian bank. The bond, which has a five-year maturity and pays a floating rate coupon, is backed by prime Romanian residential mortgages and is rated (P) Baa2 by Moody’s. The transaction attracted strong investor interest from both local and international institutional investors, including the IFC and ...
Council of the EU adopts measures to reduce banking sector risks
Monday, May 20, 2019
The Council of the European Union adopted on Tuesday a comprehensive legislative package which will reduce risks in the banking sector and further reinforce the banks' ability to withstand potential shocks, a release informs.The package contains amendments to the capital requirement legislation (Regulation 575/2013 and Directive 2013/36/EU) which reinforce the capital and liquidity positions of banks, and strengthens the framework for the recovery and resolution ...
Opening speech at the 16th meeting of the Financial Stability Board Regional Consultative Group for Europe
Monday, May 13, 2019
Mugur Isarescu, NBR Governor Distinguished guests,Dear colleagues,Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, I am pleased to welcome you to Romania and to the National Bank of Romania (NBR), for the Sixteenth meeting of the Financial Stability Board Regional Consultative Group for Europe. We are delighted to be able to host such a meeting. Looking ...
AAFBR: IRCC will be equal to ROBOR in one or two years
Monday, May 13, 2019
Loan installments paid by Romanians should fall by 5-10 percent between May and June by applying the new Consumer Credit Reference Index (IRCC) instead of old ROBOR and by 2-3 percent in July, but over one year or two the IRCC will be comparable to ROBOR, said Iancu Guda, president of the Association of Banking and Financial Analysts of Romania (AAFBR) . “Based on the IV quarter, 2018, calculations, the IRCC ...
Transylvania Bank and Victoriabank grant first cross border union credit Romania-Moldova
Monday, May 13, 2019
Transylvania Bank and Victoriabank announced on Tuesday, that they granted the first cross border union credit Romania-Moldova, of 21 million euro, for the commercial center Shopping MallDova. The commercial center is developed by the company Lemi Invest, a joint venture between Fiba Holding and Summa Turizm Yatirimciligi , a Victoriabank client for 10 years. Shopping MallDova is the first commercial center at European level in ...
Tax amnesty: 600,000 tax payers, exempts to mount to RON 1 bln
Monday, May 13, 2019
The tax amnesty emergency draft, asked by PM Dancila, is currently under public discussion, with 600,000 tax payers to benefit of the cancellation of the social contributions owed to the state, mounting to RON 1.035 billion. The draft GEO released by the Finance Ministry today also stipulated the VAT cut for traditional and organic food. The negative budgetary impact here is mounting to RON 106 million this year. As for the VAT cut for these ...
Government plans to cut VAT for organic food to 5 pct
Monday, May 13, 2019
The government plans to cut the value-added tax (VAT) for organic & traditional food products from 9 percent to 5 percent, a measure that coud boost a sector that is still undeveloped in the eastern European country. The government estimates that the measure will have an impact on ...
Garanti Group Romania posted a net profit of over RON 140 million in 2018
Monday, May 13, 2019
Garanti Group Romania, which brings together Garanti Bank, Garanti Leasing and Garanti Consumer Finance, registered a consolidated net profit of RON 140.3 million in 2018, reaching an asset size of RON 11.79 billion. On solo basis, Garanti Bank posted a net profit of RON 113.3 million. The bank’s business strategy of focusing on organic development and growing a healthy and balanced portfolio led to a loan volume of RON 7.13 billion and an ...
Banca Transilvania Group reports 30 pct rise in net profit in Q1 2019
Monday, May 13, 2019
Banca Transilvania Group, the largest financial group in Romania, closed the first quarter of 2019 with a net profit of RON 507.5 million, a 30.5 percent increase compared to the same period of last year. Assets grew by 2.3 percent from the end of 2018, to RON 79.7 billion. Banca Transilvania acquired Bancpost and two other non-banking companies from Eurobank group in April 2018, therefore the Q1 2018 financial report does not contain this expansion. ...
Credit Europe Bank recorded a net profit of RON 53 million in 2018, up 13 percent
Monday, May 13, 2019
Credit Europe Bank Romania recorded a net profit of RON 53 million in 2018, up 13 percent compared to 2017, after the increase in turnover of the credit cards in the portfolio and of the loans granted to the companies and the decrease in operational expenses. The bank’s results have been steadily rising in recent years, largely due to the sustained evolution of Credit Europe Bank’s main products on the domestic market: credit cards – ...
Government plans to create new state-owned bank
Monday, May 6, 2019
Romanian government plans to create a new state-owned bank with EU money aiming to support the absorption of European funds and to finance local SMEs. It is not yet clear what is the sense of creating this new state-owned bank as the government already owns two local banks – CEC Bank and Eximbank. The new bank, called National Development Bank, is still in an early stage as the government prepares the launch of the ...
Public deficit at 3.02 pct of GDP in 2018 by EU standards on end-year fiscal “window dressing”
Monday, May 6, 2019
Romanian government has maintained the public deficit at the upper limit of EU threshold of 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018, mainly due to fiscal “window dressing” measures taken at the end of last year. According to the first Eurostat estimates, released on Tuesday, Romania’s fiscal gap was RON 28.5 billion last year, of 3.02 percent of GDP in ESA 2010 terms. But this performance is ...
WB Report: Romania is close to being officially classified as a developed country
Monday, May 6, 2019
Romania has a good chance of becoming part of the “high income” world until 2020, as its gross national income (GNI) per capita is close to the threshold set by the Word Bank for this status, despite the large differences in terms of development between it and the Western world, http://business-review.eu reads. According to the latest thresholds determined in July 2018 by the World Bank, low-income ...
BNR's International reserves – April 2019
Monday, May 6, 2019
On 30 April 2019, the National Bank of Romania’s (BNR) foreign exchange reserves stood at EUR 33,690 million, compared to EUR 32,030 million on 31 March 2019. During the month, the following flows were recorded: EUR 3,522 million worth of inflows representing changes in credit institutions’ foreign currency-denominated required reserves, inflows into the Ministry of Public Finance’s accounts ...
The assets of optional pension funds exceed RON 2.1bn
Monday, May 6, 2019
The optional pension funds had assets worth more than RON 2.1 billion on March 31, 2019, up by 13.6% as compared to March 31, 2018, the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF) informs. The state bonds held the largest share in the assets, of RON 1.24 billion, i.e. 58.34%. On the second place were the shares, with RON 449,882 million (21.13%). Corporate bonds were ranked third in this respect, with RON 191.881 million, or 9.01% of total ...
Instant Factoring granted over 1,900 loans to small and micro-enterprises in its first year
Monday, May 6, 2019
Instant Factoring gave 1,930 grants to small companies and micro-enterprises worth EUR 4 million in the first year of activity on the factoring market in Romania. For this year, the company plans to increase customer portfolio by 300 percent and the funding volume to EUR 15 million. Instant Factoring is the first Romanian online factoring fintech to finance mainly small local entrepreneurs, an estimated market of 511,800 micro-companies with an annual ...
Isarescu: Accession to Eurozone does not automatically solve economy's problems
Monday, May 6, 2019
Accession to the Eurozone is no panacea, it doesn't automatically solve the problems of an economy, it might even aggravate them, on Tuesday asserted the Governor of the National Bank of Romania, Mugur Isarescu, at the presentation of the substantiation report of the National Euro Changeover Plan, carried out at the Romanian Academy."We must all be aware that the accession to the Eurozone is no panacea, it does not solve the problems of an economy, it could even ...