She explained that a new agreement with foreign banks to maintain exposure to their Romanian subsidiaries might be needed, adding that the matter will be discussed with partners.
According to Lagarde, bank capitalization under Basel III should not be a rapid process and the state should help reduce risks.
The IMF’s chief is visiting Bucharest on July 15-16. Joint missions from the IMF, the European Commission and the World Bank will arrive in Bucharest on July 17 to discuss a potential follow up agreement with Romania.
Under the Vienna Initiative, a plan aimed to prevent large deposit withdrawals from developing countries, the parent groups of nine foreign banks present in Romania, which controlled about 70% of the market, pledged in August 2009 to keep their exposure to Romania at the level registered in March that year and maintain their solvency ratio at over 10%.
A year after, the IMF, the European Commission and Romania’s central bank decided that these foreign banks’ exposure to Romania may vary between +5% and -5% from the level registered in March 2009.