The average salary in the economy went up by 24% in 2005, significantly more than the 5% productivity increase. Bank employees got the highest wages of all, while a million budget-paid employees got over 30% raises, too.
Banks are at the top of both rankings: they pay the highest salaries and granted the highest raises in 2005. The employees in the banking system made more than 650 euros per month on the average, compared with the average wage in the economy, a mere 204 euros.
The experts in the system believe there are two explanations for the high banker salaries. “First of all, the introduction of the flat tax a year ago generated higher incomes for those that made the highest wages, and bank employees fall into this category,” Radu Gratian Ghetea, the chairman of the Romanian Association of Banks (ARB) told ZIARUL FINANCIAR.
Second of all, the competition in the banking system has become tighter lately. “Banks realised they need to grab as much of the market as they could; to do that, they need the best qualified specialists they can get, whom it is necessary to pay better,” Ghetea said. The banks have very ambitious goals for this year, and if we were to sum up the market shares the players in the system set out to attain in 2006, we could easily get 200%, the ARB official says.
The salary raise trend in the banking system will continue this year, too, Radu Ghetea believes, yet it will stop in 2007. Once Banca Comerciala Romana and Casa de Economii si Consemnatiuni have been reorganised, a work force surplus will become available on the market, which will lead to a decline in the wages of bank employees.
The high wages in the banks need to be looked at carefully, says Ghetea. The major raises actually go only to those specialists that banks are hunting, while the mass of bank employees has much lower salaries and lower raises. The really well paid positions in the system start with sellers and credit analysts, the ARB chairman added.
Last year came with the highest increase in the average net salary for the entire economy: 24% in RON and 38% in euros. Practically, the average salary rose by 57 euros in 2005, more than in the entire 2000-2004 period (52 euros). The growth is even more spectacular if compared against the meagre productivity gain in the industry, of little more than 5%. Another surprise comes from the budget-paid (public administration, education and healthcare) system, where the average salary raise exceeded 30% last year. “Normally, they should maintain a proportionate ratio of productivity and wages, although it is harder to calculate productivity across the budgetary system,” Lucian-Liviu Albu, the head of the Economic Forecast Institute of the Romanian Academy commented for ZIARUL FINANCIAR.
He deems the salary increase of the budget-paid employees as surprising, because many new employees starting their careers joined the sector last year, who get low wages and this should have brought the sector average down. Albu says the wage raise in the budgetary sector is harder to justify but the Government already has a more restrictive wage policy planned for this year.
mihai.bobocea@zf.ro