Bogdan Pleșuvescu, BT: Too much is expected from Romanian firms, more than they can produce. I refer to this stress that can occur in the area of taxation

Bogdan Pleșuvescu, Deputy Managing Director of Banca Transilvania, participated at the KRUK Summit of Now Conference, organized by KRUK in partnership with Ziarul Financiar, on 24-25 November, where he made the following statements:

• In my day-to-day work I see clients who have difficulties. I see things in a more measured way, not so rosy. What we are assessing at the moment is the ability to repay, but not in that classic sense, more the ability of companies or businesses to cope with changing conditions in the economic environment. We are actually assessing resilience. If, after the 2007-2009 crisis, companies proved their resilience and learned many things, now I think that the thread has been stretched too far and too much is expected from Romanian companies, more than they can produce. I am referring to this stress that is produced in the area of taxation.
  
  
• It is all based on modeling and based on that, the assessment of a company's creditworthiness or ability to be funded or to receive funding is produced. One thing is clear, banks have very high liquidity that they can place. We want to find as many companies as possible that can meet the requirements of a bank to receive those loans. Unfortunately, given the way in which the capitalization of a company takes place, this leads to fewer and fewer companies being banked.
  
  
• We are in a situation where, after this change in the MTPL legislation, the cost of maintenance and insurance on existing fleets has increased a lot. The investments made immediately after the pandemic have already led to a situation where fleets have to be renewed and the costs are quite high. Then the transportation area is one we are looking at more carefully. I would also say the small retail area because there is a lot of competition. The announcement of Carrefour's exit is quite worrying. We might see an inflection point where the concept of small retailers coming back into fashion, where you have grocers, stores where you can find what you need, but at the moment the pressure on the trade margins of small retailers is very high.
  
  
• We are trying to understand the impact of these downsizing measures in our portfolios. When you say that there will be a number of jobs that will be affected, but without knowing exactly whether employees or just positions will be cut, there is a category where in the coming period we have to go proactively to that category.
  
  
• There is no trend at the moment. I for one have not seen such a dramatic drop in income in the IT category. There is an alternative at the moment.
  
  
• In 2026, from our perspective, we are in full budgeting exercise. As a cost of risk, we are allocating a slightly larger budget than in 2025 on the risk assessment area. From a country perspective, what I would like for 2026, is to also talk about the birth rate. I would like to see a program to increase the birth rate because the shortage of manpower cannot be solved by imports alone.