Banca de Economii depositors, born before 1943, may request deposits’ indexation

Depositors of Banca de Economii a Moldovei (BEM), born before 1943 inclusively, may visit any subsidiary of the Bank till March 23 in order to submit their requests for being included in the registration lists of beneficiaries from indexation in 2007 for the first stage. According to the Government’s data, in the period between 2003 and 2006, BEM depositors, born before 1940, who submitted requests for indexation until November 2006, have been paid about MDL 194 mln. According to the legislation, the quantum of 1 rouble to 1 leu will be applied for the recuperation of the first thousand of roubles of the collective balance of all the accounts held by the individual. The balance that exceeds the sum of 1,000 lei will be indexed at the proportion of 1 lei to 2.5 roubles. The payment of the indexed sums will be operated in stages, within the limits stipulated in the Budget Law for the respective year, depending on the birth year of the depositor. The initial information referred to 1,988,000 accounts and a deposit balance of 4.1373 billion roubles. Later, after BEM operated a repeated estimation of the accounts taking into consideration the indexation in 1995 to 1997, their number reduced to 1,298,000, and the sum on the accounts – down to 2.731 billion roubles. 18% on the account holders do not have heirs and if they pass away before recovering the indexed sums, their accounts will be closed. At the same time, circa 300,000 depositors lost the citizenship of Moldova, and other 500,000 had sums smaller than 1000 roubles on their accounts as of 1992. After the Moldovan leu had been introduced into circulation on November 29, 1993, and following the price liberalisation, the population’s deposits devaluated more than 1000 times.