Sergiu Manea, CEO of Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR), has said on Friday that the bank is considering the postponement of investment plans as a result of the introduction of the new tax for banks.
“All the investment plans we have had so far are under review,” Sergiu Manea said on Friday at a conference organized by the Romanian Banking Association (ARB) and the Romanian Banking Employers’ Council (CPBR).
The CEO of BCR has stated that this decision was made because the bank has to create a “viable economic model”.
Delaying the investments leads to lower confidence in the economy, and lack of trust “leads to fewer people taking credit,” said the BCR representative.
“We are not different from other traders,” Manea said, making a comparison between a bank and a company. He gave a simple example: if a company has expenses growing from RON 100 to RON 119, then it will return to expenses of RON 100 lei.
ARB and CPBR have organized on Friday a conference on “The Challenges of the Banking Industry in the Year of Presidency of the Council of the European Union”.
BT drops investments, too
Banca Transilvania has been the first bank to announce it is dropping any investment plan for this year following the so-called tax on greed targeting banks.
BT was planning to revamp over 200 agencies. This means that tens of constructions companies will not get those rehabilitation contracts, the general manager of BT, Omer Tetik told a press conference, referring to the controversial ordinance no 114.
„BT planned to rehabilitate over 200 agencies. This means tens of constructions firms will not get those contracts. As for the digitization, we are in the start-up phase. We decided to postpone phase 2. We have bought from Google store, we are paying RON 40 million for sustainability, performance, hardware, software,” Tetik said.
He said BT, having 60% Romanian ownership, cannot enjoy the level where it is today.
„After a good year, we cannot enjoy the level where we have got. We have reinvested the profit in the bank’s capital, we have paid RON 1.7 billion on programmes of conversing the Swiss francs credits, (…) we have granted loans for the SMEs,” the general manager argued, yet assuring the credit interests will not rise, but admitting investments will decrease and less SMEs will probably get loans.
„Customers cannot digest aggressive credit interests. We’ll cut investments, will train our employees less. We don’t want to pass the burden on the customers. It’s not their fault. We have a responsibility, we will have to be very selective in choosing our clients,” Tetik further stated.