ADVISOR TO THE NBR GOVERNOR: We won"t be able to exit the crisis this year, perhaps not even next year

Romania doesn"t have any chance of exiting the crisis this year, and most likely it won"t do so next year either, when it will be an electoral year, Adrian Vasilescu, advisor to the NBR governor said yesterday. He said: "We don"t stand a chance of exiting the crisis this year, we may not be able to exit the crisis next year when it will be an electoral year. It may take another year. God knows how much longer the crisis will last, because nobody dares to make any forecasts. Too many people are venturing guesses when it comes to when we will exit the recession".

According to Mr. Vasilescu, quoted by Agerpres, the difference between the crisis and the recession is that between a part and a whole: "The crisis is the whole, the recession is part of the crisis. You can have a crisis without a recession and there have been many crises in the world that were not accompanied by a recession, but you can"t have a recession without a crisis, because something have to disrupt the economy to have a recession, and that rupture is precisely the crisis. There is no definition that is more plastic and more accurate of the crisis than calling it a disruption of the functioning of the economy".

Concerning the exchange rate, he said that the current raise of the leu is natural rather than artificial. "Even the NBR had wanted to intervene in the market, it would have stopped the moment it saw that the market was taking the leu towards this level itself.(...) At the moment, the foreign banks have seen that they can trust the leu and they came brought foreign currencies into the domestic market which they have exchanged in lei. This is what is happening in the market and that is why the leu is gaining.", Vasilescu added.