The governor of the National Bank of Moldova Dorin Dragutanu maintains that the three banks placed under the special administration – Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank – must be liquidated, IPN reports. “These banks do not have a future and are not viable from financial viewpoint. They do not have viable information systems. They do not have products and their clients mainly left them,” the governor said after the August 5 meeting of the Supreme Security Council.
Dorin Dragutanu said that he earlier presented a plan for closing down the three banks and some of the state institutions, including the Government, should take preparatory steps in this regard. First of all, all the social payments should be transferred from Banca de Economii to another institution, most probably Moldova’s Post Office. All the treasury accounts should also be transferred from Banca de Economii so as to avoid the blocking of the activity of the public institutions. A contest will be staged to select one or several banks and this is within the competence of the Ministry of Finance.
In parallel, the central bank and the commercial banks are to discuss the transfer of the deposits of private individuals and legal entities. According to the governor, the three banks will be liquidated at an estimated cost of 14.840 billion lei, but the price could be lower.
The National Bank of Moldova instituted a special administration regime at Banca de Economii at the end of last November. Afterward, Banca Social and Unibank, with which Banca de Economii allegedly performed transactions, were also placed under special administration.
Independent experts and the foreign partners recommended that the authorities should liquidate the three banks as this is the best solution for overcoming the crisis in the financial-banking sector.
