A fresh crisis is possible, but the risk for Romania is not to see it as an opportunity.
This is what Steven van Groningen, President and CEO Raiffeisen Bank said on Thursday.
“I believe a fresh crisis will come and a crisis is also an opportunity. I believe the biggest risk is that Romania fails to understand the crisis as an opportunity and to make a leap ahead before reaching an European environment, to get closer to an European environment,” van Groningen said at the Romanian Business Leaders Summit in Bucharest.
He blamed the Economic and Social Council, which is not working properly, neither do the employers’ associations.
In Cristian Popa’s opinion, former Vice-president of the European Bank for Investments, the most plausible scenario for a new crisis is a brutal correction, either coming from the substantial debts, or from the undervaluation of capital prices.
He said such a crisis would lead to aversion to risk, including the emerging countries, among them Romania, which could be affected more or less. The consequences in Romania depend on the resilience built until that moment, a depreciation combination that could be countered by the central bank, concomitantly with higher costs of capital, both for the state and for private businesses.
Cristian Popa stressed that Romania needs annual gross funding amounting to 9% of GDP, but when the aversion to risk grows, it will limit the capacity to borrow at affordable costs for the state budget and for the companies.