Need for investment boosts long-term loans

Long-term credits are seeing an increasingly fast rise, consolidating its majority slice in the total funding granted by banks, due to both the population and companies’ requests for funds for larger investments. Whereas in April last year, the volume of long-term loans barely exceeded the level of short-term loans, the situation registered in April was markedly different. The share of long-term funding (with over 5-year maturities) rose to 43% compared with a little over 34% in April last year, according to data from the Credit Information Bureau (CRB), the body of the NBR (National Bank of Romania) which collects information on loans higher than 20,000 RON. At the end of April, loans with terms longer than five years totalled 50.3 billion RON (15.2 billion euros), a 93% increase against the same time last year. During this period, the total volume of credits reported to the CRB by commercial banks climbed by 54.5%. From April 2006 to April this year, the share of short-term credits (for periods of up to one year) fell from 34.2% to less than 31%.