Romanian banking system, losses of 3.6 bn lei after 11 months in 2014

Banks' efforts to clean up their balance sheets burdened with non-performing loans (NPLs) generated a financial loss of 3.58 billion lei for the domestic banking system, explained BNR's Governor, Mugur Isarescu, during a press conference on the Swiss Franc crisis issues.

Isarescu confirms the estimations of Nicolae Cinteza, Head of the bank's Supervision Department, who had previously said that banks on the Romanian market will incur major losses, much more than 2 billion lei, the loss recorded after nine months last year.

As the loss is expected to expand since part of the banks postponed the implementation of BNR's recommendations with respect to NPLs until December, 2014 will record the biggest loss in the past five years when except for 2013, when banks and financial institutions had an aggregate profit of nearly 49 million lei, the banking system had seen successive losses.

In 2013, profit of the 40 banks and financial institutions in Romania amounted to 48.6 million lei, following a major loss of 2.3 billion lei in the previous year. The result, albeit positive was also impacted by a major reclassification of restructured loans which led to a supplementation of expenses with provisions for credit losses and reduced in the last quarter the combined profit of lei 1.5 billion reported in the first nine months.