No Romanian cash on foreign markets

The partial deregulation of the capital account as of this year, that is the possibility to directly invest on the foreign capital markets, has not shown in the level of the funds Romanians have transferred abroad so far, specialists say. There are several reasons for this phenomenon: lack of a proper institutional framework, the poor investment culture, the rather high costs for such placements and, last but not least, the world economy slowdown, because of which even investments on the mature markets underperform. Even though the interests on dollars and euros have reached an all-time low, and there are hardly any viable investment options on the Romanian market, which should have resulted in this deregulation creating the necessary framework for such opportunities, the Romanians have not rushed to take their money out. “The international situation, the world economy decline, to be precise, because of which even investments on the mature markets fail to produce the desired yields, is one of the factors that prevented the partial liberalisation of the capital account from making any impact. I think Romanians will not invest their money abroad any time soon. They will rather go for buying shares into foreign mutual funds controlled by international financial groups, which have already announced plans to enter the Romanian market,” Dragos Neacsu, Raiffeisen Capital & Investment chairman says. ZF