Romanian banking sector has a high shock resistance, with medium to high resilience in the event of a withdrawal of finances on a possible worsening of the conflict in Ukraine, the National Bank of Romania (BNR) shows in a report on financial stability published on its website.
According to this document, possible negative evolutions of the conflict in Ukraine would probably not have a significant impact on Romania on short term, through direct exposure, as the Romanian banking’s structure does not include institutions with Russian or Ukrainian shareholders, and it holds only minor Russian or Ukrainian assets.
“The real economy has minor direct connections with Ukraine, and Romanian companies with Ukrainian shareholders are not at system scale. The connections of the real economy with Russia are more important; nevertheless, possible unfavourable evolutions of Romanian companies with Russian capital would most probably not generate effects at system level,” BNR estimates.
On the other hand, a possible aggravation of the conflict in Ukraine might have important indirect consequences to Romania, as Austria, Italy and France, who hold most of the foreign debt of Ukraine and Russia, are also well represented both in the banking and real economy of Romania.
The central bank report mentions there are seven credit organizations in Romanian banking with Austrian stockholders, three with French stockholders, and two with Italian stockholders, with a 55 percent market share in non-governmental credit as of August 2014.
“Romania has no major trade links with Ukraine and Russia (roughly 4 percent of imports and exports in June 2014), and the energy intensity of Romanian industry has decreased; this is also reflected in the lower proportion of natural gas imports, from 24.3 percent of the country’s consumption in 2012 to 15.3 percent in 2013,” the report also shows.