The National Bank of Romania (BNR)’s Board of Administration approved on Friday a new set of rules concerning loans to individuals, on which occasion the BNR governor Mugur Isarescu stated that the Cen­tral Bank would not impose restrictions on foreign currency loans for home-buyers and that the initial provisions had merely been “tweaked”, without undergoing too many changes, Mediafax reports.

According to a BNR release, the new regulations are meant to ensure a balance bet­ween new loans in the national currency and loans in foreign currency, which will contribute to consolidating financial stability and to proactively ensuring against the risk of default by debtors without currency risk coverage.

The regulations were put up to public debate and also took into consideration proposals from the financial-banking system sent via professional associations, BNR stated. According to the draft for regulations posted in September on the BNR website, loans for consumption will have a maximum maturity term of five years, clients will have to produce guarantees corresponding to 133 pc of the amount borrowed and the ad­vance on real-estate loans in EUR should amount to at least 30 pc.

Source: Nine O'Clock