Romanian households and companies consolidate their position of net creditor to local banking system, outstanding deposits with commercial banks exceeding by 30 percent the volume of loans, central bank data shows.
In January, deposits of Romanian households and companies at banks reached RON 304 bln (EUR 65.3 bln) and total non-government loans capped at RON 232.8 bln (EUR 50 bln), acoording to National Bank of Romania (NBR).
During the last twelve months, non-government deposits increased by 12.4 percent, outpacing loans (+6.8 percent).
On January 31, Romanian households had deposits at banks totalizing RON 179.6 bln (EUR 38,6 bln) and local companies had RON 124.4 bln (EUR 26.7 bln) in bank accounts.
Deposits of Romanian households and companies exceeded credit volume in 2014, due mainly to poor credit appetite after financial crisis.
However, central bank board members are seeing positive signs for credit evolution.
“In spite of a slight slowdown, the annual growth rate of credit to the private sector had remained robust in the last month of 2017, solely on account of the lei component, whose share had gone up to 62.8 percent in total”, according to minutes of the monetary policy meeting of the NBR Board on 7 February.