Bank of central banks: Exposure to Romania actually amounts to 100bn euros

The overall exposure of foreign banks to Romania, which includes the share corresponding to loans granted by their respective local branches, totalled almost 130 billion dollars (over 100 billion euros) in June 2008, according to data centralised by the Bank for International Settlements (B IS), which serves as a bank for central banks.

This exposure includes funding granted directly by foreign banks to Romanian companies, and which is not fully covered by statistics of the National Bank of Romania (NBR) on foreign debt. Swiss banks, for instance, which do not have subsidiaries in Romania, reported their exposure amounted to almost 7% of the total (9 billion dollars). Also included, with much smaller sums, are banks in Japan, Spain and Sweden, which are not present on the Romanian market, either. According to data from the BIS, which receives information from all central banks, around 30% of the exposure of foreign banks, i.e. almost 30 billion euros have maturities of up to a year, while 27% have maturities of over two years. Austrian banks account for around 35% of the overall exposure, followed by French ones (Societe Generale mainly), with 13.5% and Dutch banks, with 7.7%.

Ziarul Financiar