Liberal MEP Theodor Stolojan says that the recent speech of Finance Minister Darius Valcov about Romanian holders of Swiss franc loans “was incredibly arrogant” and asserts that the solution to the issue could be individual, if the banks relax the terms for the debtors, or collective – in the opposite situation.
“The solution cannot be other but individual, yet on one condition: that the banks understand that they truly need to relax the terms for the borrowers, which doesn’t mean extending the instalments over time, at the same interest rate. The banks must accept that they have a certain responsibility for what happened in Romania and therefore, when each individual contract is discussed, they should reduce the interest rate, find other formulas where the bank also takes over a part of these negative influences. (…) The banks must understand this, for they carry a great responsibility, from the moment they accepted to recommend to financially uninformed people, to people lacking financial education, to take out loans in Swiss francs. If, however, the banks don’t understand this, a collective solution must be found by legal ways, just as it happened in other countries,” Stolojan on Monday declared at the RFI station.
He pointed out that if the banks are unwilling to relax the loan terms, the Government and the central bank must find a collective solution.
“To the extent that commercial banks do not understand that they must hold factual individual talks on each credit agreement and that each bank needs to partially shoulder this formidable negative influence that hit all borrowers who took out loans in Swiss francs, the Government and the National Bank must reach a collective solution, as it happened in other countries. Let us remember for instance that Austria has banned at one point Swiss franc loans, Hungary has taken actions of a different kind. So a collective solution needs to be found if Romania-based commercial banks do not understand that they need to shoulder a part of this loss, the more so as all analyzes show that the Romanian banking system has an out-of-the-ordinary capacity to withstand losses through all kinds of fees, or far higher than necessary interest rates,” said Stolojan, who served as Prime Minister between 1991 — 1992.
Stolojan criticized the speech Minister of Finance Darius Valcov delivered on Friday, voicing his opinion that in absence of a solution ‘special social situations’ will set in.
“I found the Finance Minister’s speech was incredibly arrogant, it went that we don’t have 150,000 but 75,000 (borrowers in Swiss francs). This here is usually a discussion about families, not about one particular individual or another, we talk about families who took out loans to secure a home. Special social situations are thus being generated,” Stolojan.
BNR management, Finance Ministry leadership, banks’ representatives are to be heard by the Budget Committee of the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday, hotnews.ro informs. The head of this parliamentary committee Andreea Paul had asked last week that the BNR governor is heard by the committee on the issue of loans granted in Swiss Francs.