More ROL for credits

The decline of the interest rates for credits in ROL is starting to show. The same is happening to the interests for deposits, which have practically plummeted, discouraging short-term savings.
The progress of the foreign currency-denominated loans granted by banks to individuals and companies was abruptly ended in January, after the over 7% jump in December 2002.
The ROL equivalent of the foreign currency loans was merely 0.6% higher in January, with the same amount calculated in USD being only 1.8% higher than in December.
The USD-denominated lending was again bolstered by the dollar becoming 1.1% cheaper in January, but the 2.6% euro gain along with a series of visible declines in interests on ROL credits steered demand towards more ROL loans. This is particularly because the market is expecting to see the lending in domestic currency become even cheaper.
Under the circumstances, the ROL-denominated lending volume rose 6.4% in January, compared with only one percent growth in December.
Total non-government lending went up 2.8% in January, totalling 184,610bn ROL. The growth was of only 1.5% in real terms, though.
Government lending, however, fell 23% to 15,962bn ROL. The decline was primarily due to the larger amounts of cash in the General Account of the Treasury opened with the National Bank of Romania (NBR).  Overall domestic lending registered only 0.1% growth to 200,572bn ROL in January.
The ROL deposits made by companies went down 7% in January compared with December 2002, reaching 46,236bn ROL. The most serious decline was registered by the term deposits, 12.9%, while conditioned deposits shed 3.4%. Economic operators went for deposit certificates, which increased 5.6%, as such certificates allow for more operational flexibility.
People’s savings were only 1.8% higher in January, below last year’s monthly average, totalling 90,509bn ROL. Their share in the monetary mass increased to 25.4% compared with 23.8% at the end of December.