Raiffeisen Leasing: We are reposessing increasingly more goods from clients

The fact that increasingly more companies and individuals are unable to pay their instalments for goods bought under a leasing contract is obvious from the moment one sets foot in a leasing company. For instance, at the headquarters of Raiffeisen Leasing, one of the largest companies on the market, there are two display boards featuring cars or equipment repossessed from clients who can no longer afford them, and which are put up for sale. In October last year, when the crisis started to be felt increasingly more powerful on the Romanian market, there were no more than 10 ads on those boards, which did not take up a lot of space, whereas now, the boards are full of photos of cars or equipment put up for resale, and there is no more room left for new ads. “Beforehand, we would take 4-5 pictures per every item put up for resale, and we would display them on the board, but now we have no more room for new ads,” says Mihaela Mateescu, general manager of Raiffeisen Leasing. This state of affairs extends beyond Raiffeisen Leasing, being in fact specific for the whole market, which is recording a fast decline in financing due to the crash of the auto market and of the real estate market, and a significant rise in repossessions of goods, especially of cars.