NBR wants steady interests

The National Bank’s signal about interests is “steady” for the time being, NBR Governor Mugur Isarescu said. “As soon as we know for sure that the inflation downward trend is verified, the interests will be allowed to resume their way down. Our interest policy merely validates the inflation decline, it does not anticipate it,” Isarescu said. The Governor says it is most important for the decline of the interests on deposits to be stopped. “Interests on ROL are well into the real positive area now. The channel conveying the interest policy has worked well this time, in spite of the central bank’s position as net debtor to the banking system. The interests on deposits have actually increased,” Isarescu comments. Without much ado about it, many banks have slightly raised interests on deposits attracted from clients lately, implicitly admitting the rates had dropped too fast, crossing even the real positive/real negative limit. One of the formulas used is offering interest bonuses for large deposits. After all, the banks’ interest cutting earlier in the year was beginning to turn against them, as lower and lower amounts of ROL were finding their way to banks. ZF