Ignacio Jaquotot (Intesa Sanpaolo): Romania is a country where we want to stay and invest

Romania is a country where we want to stay and invest, Ignacio Jaquotot, head of Intesa Sanpaolo's International Subsidiary Banks Division said on Thursday, adding that he sees a promising future for Romania.

If we look at the fundamentals of the Romanian economy, in the past year we see something unique, a 7 percent GDP growth in just one year. The public debt share of the GDP is about 35 percent, the unemployment rate is very low, four years ago the banking system's NPL ratio was about 22 percent, and it is now around 8 percent .When we analyze a country in Central and South-Eastern Europe, we do an exercise. Let us imagine that the GDP of these countries was 100 in 2000. Guess which had the best performance 17 years later? There were only two countries where this indicator was over 200. One is Slovakia with 204, but Romania's is the best performance with 205. So this is something unique. This is the reason why in 2005 Romania's GDP per capita was 23 percent of the EU average, and today it stands at 55 percent. In relative terms, I believe the greenest grass is in Romania, but you don't realize this because you are from Romania, Ignacio Jaquotot told a press conference.

Jaquotot stressed that things look different from the outside, and this is why the group believes in the Romanian market and this is also the reason for its presence here.

This explains why we have confirmed over the years our long-term commitment to your country. Ever since I took up this position in this division, I told every meeting with journalists, when asked if we were selling or leaving this country, that we have no such intention. On the contrary, we consider Romania a strategic market where we invest and we have good reasons to do so. Year after year we are increasingly convinced that this is the strategy to follow and we will be present for the long run in Romania. It's a country where we want to stay and invest. We have a long-term vision and commitment, and we see a promising future for Romania, said Jaquotot.

Asked to comment on the future evolution of the Romanian economy, Ignacio Jaquotot said that the government should focus on reducing disparities between Bucharest plus another five other major cities on the one hand and the rest of the country on the other.

Intesa Sanpolo Bank Romania recorded in H1 a net loss of one million euro, Romania being the only country in the region where the bank was in the red. The bank posted in H1 operating revenues of 21 million euro, deposits of 0.9 billion, loans of 0.8 bln euro and 1.3 bln worth of assets. The bank's non-performing loans amounted to 12 million euro, with a coverage ratio of 65 percent.

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