Radulescu (BNR): Romania has the lowest level of financial brokerage in the EU

Romania has the lowest level of financial brokerage in the European Union, 50 per cent of the GDP, while the European average is of 200 per cent, the head of the Directorate for Financial Stability of the National Bank of Romania (BNR), Eugen Radulescu, told IFN Credit National Conference. 

"We are, by far, the country with the lowest level of financial brokerage. It stands somewhere below 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. On top of us is Bulgaria, with 98 per cent, and then Poland, with a little over 100 per cent. The European Union average exceeds 200 per cent. Which means that, as far as this chapter is concerned, our stand is less good than others. There are numerous reasons for this. First of all is the 70 and something per cent debt service. For these are not two things that are comparable, with the total debt. The debt service refers to how much an individual has to pay from his/her monthly income," said Radulescu. 

According to him, the level of more than 70 per cent appears only in the case of persons with very low incomes. 

This level of more than 70 percent only appears in connection to the very low incomes, of the last third of incomes from work. The ones with larger incomes have a smaller weight of the credit. This is less important to us, however. You saw that we went through the extremely unpleasant experience of the debt-to-asset law and the freezing of the Swiss franc exchange rate, with the legal regulations that came afterwards addressing the fact that the problem became real, acute. Of course, the solution adopted by the legislative was not a happy one and it got rejected by the Constitutional Court, which saved us from a great danger at the level of the financial system," the BNR official said. AGERPRES .