Ghizzoni, UniCredit: We would like to give loans in Romania, but demand is lacking

The state remains bankers’ main client, while the economy is
still unable to absorb credits, says Federico Ghizzoni, head of
Italian group UniCredit’s operations in Central and Eastern
Europe.
“I phone Rasvan Radu, our CEO in Romania, on a weekly basis to
encourage him to boost lending, like I do with our other bankers in
the region,” Ghizzoni says.
“We are pressing for increased lending. We are talking with
our people to find opportunities to grant funding. If a project is
workable, we should go ahead and do it, not pull back, because
economies need to start budging. One also needs to work on a
psychological level in order to overcome the crisis,” said the
UniCredit official.
This is the first time that a high-ranking official of a
foreign bank present on the Romanian market gives such a strong
signal for lending to be resumed.
Ghizzoni says banks also have a social responsibility in the
current international economic context. “We are private
organisations, we work for a profit, but we also need to support
the economies and to be more daring when it comes to lending. It’s
time to show we are good banks by giving loans, not by staying on
the sidelines.”
He complains however that, except on markets such as Poland
and Turkey, the answer from bankers in the group is that demand is
still lacking.