Bancherul - BANCI / ENGLISH / Laszlo Diosi, CEO of OTP Bank Romania: We increased the loans for SMEs over the market average

OTP Bank Romania CEO, Laszlo Diosi, said today in a meeting with journalists, who were rewarded for their contributions to promote financial and banking industry, that his bank had a good performance in 2011 regarding the financing of SMEs, in the context of economic stability.

"Specifically, we managed to increase the volume of loans to SMEs over the market average, by about 14%, which we are proud of," said Diosi.

The bank will launch in the next months new loans for agricultural sector and for co-financing the EU funds, he added.

Diosi said that agriculture has a huge growth potential in Romania, but the Romanian farmers unfortunately do not take advantaje of it.

"I saw many foreigners who have taken over large areas of land on which they received significant agricultural subsidies that should be used by local people," said Diosi.

He believes the main challenge to agricultural unpredictable evolution is not the weather but the lack of organization of farmers. The exploited areas are fragmented in small pieces instead of functioning in associations and large farms, as in other European countries.

"It is the fault of communist system of production cooperatives which were operating inefficiently and distroyed after the fall of communism without being replaced," said the head of OTP Bank Romania.

"SME lending was supported by Kogalniceanu program, in which we have given state guaranteed loans to a total of approximately 300 companies, as well as a very low, of around 2-3%, bad loans portfolio since 2009, after the crisis, " added Diosi.

Following the experience of program Kogalniceanu, he learned that there are many SMEs reluctant or mistrustful in their ability to borrow from the bank.

"We have seen SMEs who came for the first time in their life to the bank to take a loan and not even imagine that they could qualify for a loan. This is a result of the crisis, which made many companies and individuals being reluctant to borrow, "says Diosi.