“This country used to have bankers who knew how to finance commerce, businesses, other banks,” Isarescu said in a speech at the Romanian Banking Institute.
“It’s obvious this segment (retail) has reached saturation levels… How can you stimulate consumption when the problem in the first place was triggered by consumption overheating?” he added.
Romanian private lending fell 0.3% in real terms to 204.6 billion lei (EUR48.6 billion) in April from a month earlier, and was down 5.7% on the year, according to central bank data.
Household foreign currency loans totaled RON62.8 billion at the end of April, nearly double compared with RON35.1 billion in leu-denominated loans. (EUR1=RON4.2088)