Professional associations, worried about foreign banks withdrawing the funds borrowed by the State

Professional associations CONPIROM and UGIR-1903 are extremely concerned at the EUR 2 billion withdrawal of funds from Romania by the branches of some foreign banks, and urge the IMF to get involved in changing this type of behavior that can cause serious harm to the Romanian economy, according to a press release by the two organizations, sent to our editors.

According to the quoted source, during the meeting of November 3rd 2009, officials of CONPIROM and UGIR-1903 urged the members of the IMF mission to help unlock lending to Romanian companies, by negotiating with foreign banks headquartered in Romania. "In spite of the fact that the IMF mission gave clear signals in this respect, not only do some foreign banks not encourage, by lending, the economy that they operate in and which brings them sizeable profits, but some of them have even come to withdraw their money from Romania, claiming that their profits are no longer what they were before the crisis", the leaders of the two organizations, Vasile Turcu and Ioan Cezar Corâci said.

According to them, the behavior of the banks is all the more outrageous as they agreed on principle with the IMF that they would not withdraw funds from Romania, in an agreement which was signed this spring.

The leaders of UGIR 1903 and CONPIROM warned that massive withdrawals of funds from the Romanian market will mean that Romanians will be paying interest on the loans from the international institutions, while the money will return abroad without helping Romania"s recovery.