Gabriela Folcuţ, Executive Director of ARB: "Only 28% of Romanians have basic digital skills, compared to a European average of 54%"

Our country ranks last in the European Union in terms of the degree of digitization, assessed by the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), stated yesterday Gabriela Folcut, the Executive Director of the Romanian Banks Association (ARB), during a conference hosted by BNR.

The ARB representative said: "The degree of financial inclusion in Romania is 69% among people over 15 years old. Indeed, digitization has evolved a lot and led to an intensification of payments made through electronic channels. Despite this fact and the developments of the last eight years, cash still predominates. If we look at the numbers, around 43% of transactions were made by card in 2021 and 57% were cash withdrawals. In other words, for one lei paid in cash, only 0.73 lei was paid via the card".

Gabriala Folcuţ added: "A second element is the degree of digitization, the degree of knowledge of information at the level of competence and, unfortunately, Romania does not occupy a leading place from this perspective. We have the Digital Economy and Society Index (n.r. DESI), and we rank 27 out of 27 among the European Union states. There are four dimensions analyzed, and in one dimension we rank fifteenth, in all others we rank 27 out of 27. And in the human capital dimension, where we analyze basic digital skills, Romania is in last place. Practically, 28% of Romanians have basic digital skills compared to a European average of 54%. Only 9% of Romanians have more than elementary digital skills, compared to a triple European average of 26%".

According to a research carried out by the Romanian Association of Banks among 4,200 students aged between 13 and 15, 90% of the students correctly answered the digital education question regarding safety measures for their money. Likewise, 93.4% of those surveyed know what an adult must do to protect themselves from fraud in terms of investments, Gabriala Folcutu pointed out.

"Only 62.5% of students know how to calculate simple interest. 63% of the students surveyed know what inflation is. I say this because, all international studies have four questions, namely - what is inflation, how to calculate simple interest, how to calculate compound interest and what is risk diversification", said the Executive Director of ARB.