The National Bank of Romania (BNR, the central bank) is analyzing the opportunity to intervene with new macro-prudential instruments to avoid a new boom in lending, given the 20pct advance in retail lending in two years, the head of the BNR’s Financial Stability Department Eugen Radulescu said on Monday.
“The population’s capacity to honour the debt service has improved due to the rise in available income and lower cost of credit. However, it prudence is required. This growth should be monitored properly by banks and by us and I can tell you that, as far as the BNR is concerned, we analyze the extent to which it is necessary and appropriate to intervene in this process with new macro-prudential tools in order to avoid the boom that existed until 2008, but which probably will not be repeated, because then, still in the post-communist period, we did not know what recession meant,” Radulescu told a specialist conference. More…