Since taking office as governor of the National Bank of Moldova in 2009, Dorin Drăguţanu has implemented the country’s first inflation-targeting policy, has seen interest rates on loans and deposits decline and has welcomed amendments to the law on financial institutions. He speaks to The Banker about challenges surrounding transparency in the banking sector and economic implications of the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
The problems faced by Moldova's banking sector are not performance related, but instead are deeply rooted in a lack of transparency in banks’ shareholder structures. After opaque shareholder changes in the country's two largest banks in 2013, authorities are working on a resolution.
In the past decade, foreign investment and natural resources wealth have transformed the banking landscape in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Banker's latest ranking for the region shows which countries have benefited the most from this change.
Moldova is a land-locked country of about 4.2 million people. Gross domestic product (GDP) for 2004 was about 32bn lei ($2.6bn), a growth of 7.3% in real terms over 2003. Major contributors to real GDP growth were agriculture (3.4%), services (2.6%) and manufacturing (0.9%).