Romanians will be able to buy gold by the kilo

Piraeus Bank, one of the players with a fast rise on the
retail segment in the past few years, is selling gold to its
clients starting this week, through 20 of its 180 territorial
branches on the Romanian market. No other commercial bank is
selling gold to its clients at present, although investments in
precious metals are considered very safe, and have generated high
yields to investors after the crisis set in. Only the BCR offers
services of purchasing gold from clients, also in a low number of
branches. At Tuesday’s NBR exchange rate (NBR – Romanian central
bank), one gramme of gold was worth 94.85 RON on Monday, 26% more
than a year ago, when the international financial crisis hit the
Romanian market. This compares with a 5% decline for the BET index,
the most representative index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange,
against October last year. Piraeus will sell the gold in the form
of gold bars, with the 20 branches involved in the project being
distributed across Romania.