The consumer savings went up by 26% or by 21.5 billion lei (around 5 billion euros) in the last two years, during which the crisis has been fully felt. read more...

The ratio of the loans banks have to recover from clients and the value of the collateral they hold for these loans is at a comfortable level, of less than 80% says NBR. As a paradox, the ratio has remained constant over the last few years, although home prices have fallen by as much as 50% in some cases. read more...

The current Labor code has to be changed as more flexibility on the labor market cannot be accomplished without a cut in social contributions, Romanian Finance minister Gheorghe Ialomitianu said during a conference on Wednesday. read more...

Sorin Blejnar, head of Romanian tax authority ANAF, said there will be a major investigation into high wealth in the second half of next year, although some controls may be carried out in 2011. read more...

The investments of pension funds, which manage over one billion euros in assets and have a potential to become the biggest stock exchange investors over the next few years, will become public information twice a year, once the Private Pension System Supervisory Commission (CSSPP) has approved a set of modifications brought to the reporting and transparency norms. read more...

How to strike a balance between the caution needed to protect the bank's results and the commitment of expanding operations further, this was the main challenge in 2010 for Guy Poupet, chairman of BRD-SocGen, in the first year since he took the reins of the second biggest bank on the market. read more...

Eight Romanian bank fraud suspects have been placed under arrest for 29 days following investigations and search operations carried out by organized crime prosecutors in Bacau, eastern Romania. read more...

Banca Comerciala Romana (Romanian Commercial Bank - BCR) last year posted a 100-105 million-lei profit, according to Romanian accounting standards (RAS), less than half the 2009 profit, said shareholder sources. read more...

Banks increased their foreign short-term debts, largely reflecting funding received from foreign shareholders, by almost 1bn euros last year, to 7bn euros. read more...

A poll conducted by Romanian surveyor IRES revealed that 76% of Romanians would prefer to stay away from banks, while less than half of bank clients trust the lenders. read more...

Romania's Government is considering steps to recover money provided as social assistance to fraudulent beneficiaries, such as reducing later benefits or creating a repayment schedule, and will check the applicants' real source of income before disbursing such benefits in the future. read more...

Romania will reduce the number of social services and beneficiaries, whose eligibility for assistance will be tied to their efforts to find work and their children's school performance, says a government paper obtained by Mediafax. read more...

Last year the overall assets in the Romanian banking system rose by just 3.5% - the lowest increase in the last decade. The economic crisis also took its toll on the balance sheets of banks, which had to boost provisions and even remove loans from their balance sheets because they knew they would never recoup them. read more...

The large number of signatures and stamps needed on documents issued by state institutions is only meant to cover the incompetence of workers in the administrative sector, which saw more than 100,000 employees removed from its ranks, but the system's reformation changed nothing. read more...

Bank Gutmann, the most important player on Austria's private banking market, managed to find almost 50 euro millionaires in Romania whose fortunes to manage. read more...

A month and a half after the enforcement of the Fiscal Code version approved by the Government at the end of 2010, the Finance Ministry has finalised the enforcement guidelines clarifying aspects such as the regime of fiscal loss in 2010, obligations of companies that paid the minimum tax in 2010, criteria for qualifying as a small enterprise, setting social contributions and penalising gambling establishments that do not issue admission tickets. read more...

A project won by the Economy Ministry, funded with over 820,000 euros in European money, will lead to a 10% increase in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises, SME employees and in the value of exports, according to Andreea Paul Vass, adviser to premier Emil Boc. read more...

On the few examples of successful company debt restructuring, bankers and entrepreneurs have now turned into adversaries, and over-indebted companies are taking their problems to a point where their entering bankruptcy becomes inevitable. read more...

Romanian SME loan guarantee fund FNGCIMM paid some 95 million lei (EUR1=RON4.2496) to banks last year, up 35% from RON70 million in 2009, mostly for working capital loans. read more...

Romania's economy shrank at an annual rate of 1.2% in unadjusted terms in 2010, a slower pace than initially predicted, according to a flash estimate of the country’s statistics institute released Tuesday. read more...