Bankers move to one-digit interest rates for RON loans

The decline in the interests at which banks borrow money is starting to translate in the cost of the loans. This will show how high the demand for loans is.

Although it would have been unbelievable a year ago, loans in RON for companies, as well as mortgage credits will revert to one-digit interests as in 2006-2007, because bankers are adjusting their offers, pressured by the need to drive sales up to achieve their budget targets for this year.

The cut in RON loan prices has been stimulated by the National Bank's policy for several months now, which took heart from the improvement of the perception of Romania among foreign investors at the beginning of the year and pushed for a slump of interest rates on the interbank market to 3-6% a year, clearly below the monetary policy rate of 7% per annum.

Now is when we shall clearly see whether the very slow progression of the lending in the last eighteen months was really caused by the reluctance of clients to take on more debt, as bankers say, or whether the lack of demand was caused by the too high interest level. The lending in RON for individual clients fell by 5% in January compared with January 2009, while the corporate lending was down 3%.

In 2009, the share of RON loans in the total fell by less than 40%.