New “greed tax” in Romania to penalise “unjustifiable” loan interest rates

Romania's tax on financial assets (the “greed tax”) will no longer be linked to the interbank interest rate benchmark ROBOR, but to an index based on the average interest rate resulting from actual transactions between banks, the leader of the junior ruling party, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), Calin Popescu Tariceanu, stated on March 18.

However, banks will be penalized if they maintain unjustifiably high interest rates on loans, he commented.

The ALDE leader also claims that it has become obvious and generally accepted that the loan interest rates in Romania are well above interest rates in other European countries.

“We consider that there is no justification for this and certainly we are going to go with two measures: a penalty for banks that continue to practice unreasonably high interest rates and a stimulus measure for those that lower interest rates and grant more loans,” Tariceanu said, quoted by Adevarul.

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