Romanian banks are the most profitable in the EU

Romanian banks derived the biggest revenues from interests and commissions in relation to the overall value of assets held, as well as the highest return on equity (ROE) in the European Union, according to data published in a European Central Bank report. Banks in Romania earned 4.5 billion euros from interests and commissions, accounting for 5.8% of the overall value of assets. In Hungary and Poland, for instance, the income to asset ratio was of around 3.8%. The ROE in the overall Romanian banking system was 29.5%, almost double the average level in Central and Eastern European EU member states. However, analysts say data presented by the ECB are not fully comparable. “Romania was extremely prosperous last year. The economy reached a high and companies reported extraordinary results. But data are not entirely comparable, because of the different reporting standards used. Moreover, they do not offer a very clear picture, because they need to be correlated with the risk,” said Ionut Dumitru, chief economist of Raiffeisen Bank.