Romanian banking sector is not exposed to risks associated with conflict in Ukraine

The Romanian banking sector is not directly exposed to the risks associated with the conflict in Ukraine, and the attracted deposits amount to a modest value for our system, of 17.9 million lei for Russia and 40.7 million lei for Ukraine, Leonardo Badea, vice president of the National Bank of Romania (BNR), said on Thursday, Agerpres reports.

"The Romanian banking sector is not directly exposed to the risks associated with this conflict [from Ukraine - editor's note]. Exposures of the credit institutions are low in respect to the trade-off with Russia or Ukraine, there are no such granted loans and advances in balance sheets, and the attracted deposits amount to a modest value for our system, of 17.9 million lei for Russia and 40.7 million lei for Ukraine, according to the data from December 2021. About 300 enterprises running on capital from Russia have been identified, but the role these firms play among the total non-financial companies in insignificant, as they generate 0.1pct of gross value added, produce 0.66pct of turnover, hold 0.2pct of the total assets of non-financial companies and employ 0.08pct of the total number of employees," said Leonardo Badea, at the European Financial Services Conference ECFS2022, organized by the Institute of Financial Studies.

According to him, the exposures of credit institutions in Romania to domestic companies running on Russian capital are very low, of 71 million lei. The long-term private debt to non-financial creditors of Russian companies stood at 145 million euros at the end of 2020.

He also referred to the impact on the energy sector, noting that between January and November 2021, 70pct of the gas consumed in Romania was from local production and only 10pct of the total consumed by Romania was supplied by Russia.