Let The East Into The Eurozone Now!

“It’s 20 years after Europe was united in 1989 – what a tragedy if you allow Europe to split again.”
Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, in an interview with the Financial Times

(Click On Image To View Video)

World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, made a call this week - in an interview with the Financial Times - for a European Union-led and co-ordinated global support programme for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe. I agree wholeheartedly, and even if I have, reluctantly, to accept the point made last week by our Economy & Finance Commissioner Joaquin Almunia that our pockets, though deep, are certainly not bottomless (and thus it is probably beyond our means right now to rescue the non-EU Eastern states), I still feel we should make good on our responsibilities to those who are EU members, and to do so by opening the doors of the Eurozone to those who wish to join. Since this proposal is fairly radical, the justification that follows will be lengthy.

This is not a view I have arrived at lightly, but looking at the extent of the problem we now have before us, a problem which is growing by the day, and taking into account the fact that the origins of the economic crisis in the East must surely rest (at least in part) in the decision to make euro participation a condition for EU membership for these countries (a possibility which was subsequently withdrawn in the critical moment, when the going started to turn rough), and then assessing the risk to the Western European banking system which would be posed by simply sitting back and watching it all happen, I think this move is not only the least damaging of the policies we can now follow, it is the in effect the only viable path left to us if we are to keep the eurozone as an integral entity together.

If this proposal were accepted a new set of membership criteria would need to be drawn up, of course, but the underlying principle would have to be one of offering the certainty of entry as guaranteed forthwith, for those who chose to accept. Rules were made to be broken, and nothing should be so inflexible - not even the Maastricht eurozone membership criteria - that it cannot be ammended as circumstances dictate. And at this point even the undertaking that this - like the long awaited US Stimulus programme - was on the table, would be sufficient to provide immediate, and much needed relief. Flirting with doing nothing here is, in my opinion, flirting with disaster, both in the East and in the West.

Existing Maastricht Criteria

Convergence criteria (also known as the Maastricht criteria) are the criteria for European Union member states to enter the third stage of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro. The four main criteria are based on Article 121(1) of the European Community Treaty. Those member countries who are to adopt the euro need to meet certain criteria.

1. Inflation rate: No more than 1.5 percentage points higher than the three lowest inflation member states of the EU.

2. Government finance:

Annual government deficit: The ratio of the annual government deficit to gross domestic product (GDP) must not exceed 3% at the end of the preceding fiscal year. If not, it is at least required to reach a level close to 3%. Only exceptional and temporary excesses would be granted for exceptional cases.

Government debt: The ratio of gross government debt to GDP must not exceed 60% at the end of the preceding fiscal year. Even if the target cannot be achieved due to the specific conditions, the ratio must have sufficiently diminished and must be approaching the reference value at a satisfactory pace.

3. Exchange rate: Applicant countries should have joined the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM II) under the European Monetary System (EMS) for 2 consecutive years and should not have devaluated its currency during the period.

4. Long-term interest rates: The nominal long-term interest rate must not be more than two percentage points higher than in the three lowest inflation member states.

The Dimensions Of The Problem

European governments, the European Union and international financial organizations need to act fast on risks stemming form banks’ exposure in the eastern part of the continent to avert an escalation of the credit crisis, Nomura Holdings Inc. said. East European countries are struggling to refinance foreign- currency loans taken out by borrowers during years of prosperity through 2007, when economic growth averaged at more than 5 percent. The International Monetary Fund, which has bailed out Latvia, Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine and Belarus, warned on Jan. 28 that bank losses may widen as “shocks are transmitted between mature and emerging market banking systems.” “Swift action is needed to restore confidence and prevent trouble” to financial and economic stability in the euro region and emerging Europe, said Peter Attard Montalto, an emerging markets economist at Nomura International in London. “Any move should be quick. The situation has begun to decline more rapidly since the end of last year and there is risk that any action may come too late.”
Bloomberg

Robert Zoellick is far from being a lone voice in the wilderness about the current level of risk to the coutries in the East, and indeed precisely those EU banks who have been most active in emerging Europe are now busily trying to convince EU regulators, the European Central Bank and Brussels itself to coordinate new measures to counter the impact of the financial crisis confronting the region. The problem in the East certainly now adds a new dimesion to the problems facing us here in Europe, since West European governments are now being simultaneously hit on a number of fronts, and the situation is become more complicated by the day.




In the first place most West European economies are now either in or near recession, and their domestic banking systems are, to either a greater or a lesser extent, struggling. The West European states are thus, by and large, already feeling stress on their own sovereign borrowing capacities. But, with greater or lesser effectiveness, these countries are still able to increase their debt, even if sometimes the surge in borrowing is very dramatic, as in the case of Ireland, which will see gross debt/GDP shooting up from 24.8% in 2007 to a projected 68.2% in 2010 (EU January 2009 Forecast).

The situation in Eastern Europe is very different, and their economies and credit ratings evidently can't support such dramatic increases in their debt levels. Thus, in the case of those countries with a significant home banking presence, like Latvia's Parex, or Hungary's OTP, the support of external organisations (the IMF, the World Bank, the EU) becomes rapidly necessary when the bank concerned starts to have liquidity problems. But as a result of the consequent bailout the debt to GDP ratio starts to rise in a way which then places even subsequent eurozone membership in jeopardy. Latvia's Debt/GDP is, for example set to rise from around 12% of GDP in 2007 to over 55% in 2010. With a 10% plus GDP contraction already in the works for 2009, it is clear that Latvia's debt to GDP will rise beyond the critical 60% level. Hungary's debt/GDP is already above, and rising. If we don't do something soon, these two countries at least are being launched off towards sovereign default.




But the other half of this particular and peculiar coin turns up again in a rather unexpected way, and that is in the form of those West European banks who have subsidiaries in CEE countries, and who find now themselves faced, not with bailouts, but with ever rising default rates. This difficulty evidently and inevitably then works its way back upstream to the parent bank, and to the home state national debt, as the bank almost inevitably needs to seek support from one West European government, or another (in fact Unicredit, which has difficulty getting money from an already cash-strapped Italian government is talking of applying for support from the Austrian government via its Austrian subsidiary).

Austria is, in fact, a very good case in point here, since, as Finance Minister Josef Proell recently indicated, the country had some 230 billion euros of debt outstanding in Eastern Europe, equivalent to around 70 percent of Austria's GDP. The Austrian daily "Der Standard" have also reported the analysts view that a failure rate of 10 percent in Eastern Europe's debt repayments could lead to serious difficulties for Austria's financial sector. And this is no hypothetical "what if" type problem since the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has estimated Eastern Europe's bad debts could go over 10 percent and could even reach 20 percent in the course of the current crisis. Underlining the mounting concern in Austria, Proell tried last week to convince EU finance ministers to provide 150 billion euros is support to CEE economies as a first step in trying to contain the growing wave of defaults.



The total quantity of debt outstanding is hard to put a precise number on, but the Bank for International Settlements estimated that, as of last September, more than $1.25 trillion had been leant by eurozone banks, and if you add in U.K., Swedish and Swiss bank liabilities the number rises to $1.45 trillion.

Western Europeean banks have a very important market share in the East, ranging from a low of 65 percent in Poland to almost 100 percent in the Czech Republic. This basically means two things, that the region's businesses and consumers are extraordinarily dependent on uninterrupted capital inflows from the West, and that some West European banking systems are extremely sensitive to rising default rates in the East. Of course the problem goes beyond the EU's borders, and while EU bank market shares in the Community of Independent States is rather less significant than in the EU12, due to the still substantial domestic ownership which exists there, exposure to defaults is not unimportant, especially in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and, of course, in Russia itself. Further, there is South East Europe to think about, and countries like Serbia and Croatia.

Large Banks Take The Initiative

Getting near to desperation, some of the largest banks involved - Italy's UniCredit and Banca Intesa, Austria's Raiffeisen International and Erste Group Bank, France's Societe Generale and Belgium's KBC - have launched a common initiative to try to lobby for an EU wide solution to the problem.

UniCredit is the largest lender in Poland and Bulgaria, while Erste is number one in Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with KBC occupying the position in Hungary, Intesa in Serbia, and Raiffeisen in Russia and Ukraine. Hungary's OTP Bank, emerging Europe's number 5 lender and the largest one in its home country, does not formally belong to the group. On the other hand OTP is actively looking for support.

OTP Bank Nyrt., Hungary’s biggest bank, said it’s in talks over a “role” for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as it announced a 97 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit and “substantial” job cuts. As well as a possible EBRD involvement, OTP may also seek funds from Hungary’s emergency loan package from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the World Bank to “better serve the economy,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sandor Csanyi said at a press conference in Budapest today. “There’s a chance the EBRD will assume a role in OTP, but I must stress that we plan no issue of new shares,” he said. OTP “doesn’t need to be saved,” Csanyi added.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, while expressing support for the bank initiative, has stopped short of offering concrete assistance or suggesting measures beyond those which are already in place.

The president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Thomas Mirow, wrote in the Financial Times this week the bank proposals "deserve full support as a worsening crisis in emerging Europe will threaten Europe as a whole".

The Austrian government has already announced it is trying to raise support for a general European Union initiative to rescue the region’s banking system. The government has set aside 100 billion euros in cash and guarantees to stabilise its banking sector. Next in line in terms of exposure are Italy ($232 billion), Germany ($230 billion) and France ($175 billion).

Unicredit is publicly rather dismissive of the problem (as can be seen from the slide below which from a presentation they gave earlier this week, please click on image to see better), but Italian investors are far from convinced by their arguments, as witnessed by the fact that their stock has plunged 41 percent this year, and by the fact that they were forced to sell 2.98 billion euros in 50 year bonds this week to shore up their Tier I capital after investors only bought about 4.6 million shares, or 0.48 percent, from their most recent rights offer. UniCredit, which said last month it is considering asking for government assistance, has also been disposing of assets to raise money and it plans to pay shareholders their dividends in yet more shares. Nationalisation of banks to supply credit lines to the private sector is one hypothesis currently being studied by Silvio Berlusconi, according to a Financial Times report this morning.

(Click on image for better viewing)
The Austrian proposal includes funds from the European Investment Bank, the European Central Bank and the EU Cohesion Fund. The Austrian government has offered money of its own and has been urging Germany, France, Italy and Belgium as well as the EU itself to contribute. One feature, however, stands out in all of the proposals which have so far been advanced: they are loan based-support. What Soros calls the "tricky question" of fiscal allocation from Europe's richer member states has not so far been raised, but it will be, since it will have to be.

And of course, Austria's concern is far from being altruistic, as Austria's economy and sovereign debt stability depend on finding a solution. It is hardly surprising to learn that credit-default swaps linked to Austrian government debt soared this week - by 39 basis points to a record 225 - on concern the country will need to bail out the domestic banks itself as they report losses and writedowns linked to eastern European investments. Erste, which said last week that full-year profit probably slumped by almost 26 percent, is in talks with the government to get 2.7 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in state aid. RZB has asked for 1.75 billion euros.

The European Central Bank on the other hand, seems reluctant to extend emergency financial help to crisis-hit countries beyond the 16-country eurozone. The ECB did not have “a mandate to be a regional United Nations agency”, Yves Mersch, governor of Luxembourg’s central bank, recently told the Financial Times. Such comments reveal the level of resistance which exists within the ECB’s 22-strong governing council to the idea of offering financial support to countries outside the zone.

The ECB has so far offered loans to Hungary and Poland, but has attached what some consider to be excessively strong conditions on facilities allowing them to borrow up to 5billion and 10billion euros respectively. Mr Mersch, whose views are thought to be widely shared in the ECB, suggested the central bank was worried about setting precedents if it relaxed its stance on helping individual countries. While some euromembers might favour assisting nearby nations, “we must not forget that other people might be sensitive to different countries”.

Who Bails Out The West European Banks In The East?

Governments and EU officials are struggling to formulate a coherent response to the economic and financial turmoil that has started to engulf the eastern part of the old continent. EurActiv presents a round-up of national situations with contributions from its network. Leaders of EU countries from central and eastern Europe will meet on 1 March ahead of an extraordinary summit on the same day with the bloc's other members, it emerged on Thursday (19 January). Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has invited his counterparts from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia for the talks to ensure the 27-nation meeting on the financial crisis is not dominated by the interests of Western member states. See full Euractiv article on background.

The EU has so far provided emergency balance-of-payments assistance to two of the East European member states in difficulty - Hungary and Latvia, and EU ministers did agree in December to more than double the funding available for such emergency lending to 25 billion euros ( so far Hungary has been allocated 6.5 billion and Latvia 3.1 billion). It is also quite probable that such lending will now have to be extended to the two newest southeast European members, Romania and Bulgaria, since their ballooning current account deficits and dramatic credit crunches mean that they are steadily getting into more and more difficulty.

The core of the problem is that the East European economies enjoyed strong credit driven booms, which fuelled higher than desireable inflation and lead to strong foreign exchange loan borrowing which simply bloated current account deficits. Now capital flows into emerging Europe have dried up as the global financial crisis has raised investors' risk aversion and prompted them to dump emerging market assets, leaving foreign-owned banks as the only source of loans for companies and consumers.


Italy's UniCredit, the biggest lender in emerging Europe, warned at the end of January that there was a clear risk of the global credit crunch gripping the region. UniCredit board member Erich Hampel stated at a Euromoney conference in Vienna that the bank was committed to fund its subsidiaries in the CEE countries and would continue to lend, but at the same time made absolutely clear that in order to do this his bank would need government support, whether from Austria, or Poland, or Italy itself.

Hampel said Bank Austria would decide during the first quarter whether to tap the Austrian government's banking stability package for fresh equity. " he said. "Our budget is under discussion now and clearly assumes growth in lending and in funding to the East. "

And according to a report from the Austrian central bank the fact that a relatively small number of Western European groups - including three Austrian ones - own most of the banks in Central and Eastern Europe means that there is the risk of a "domino effect", implying the crisis would spread quickly from one country to another. "How capital flows into (emerging Europe) will develop depends on the financial strength of the parent groups and of the sister banks, and on whether the parents are willing and able to fund their subsidiaries," the bank's half-yearly Financial Stability Report said. "The risks to refinancing are increased by the danger of a domino effect, because a large part of the foreign capital in many countries comes from a relatively small number of Western European banks," .

"What we see is that the emerging European economies have lost all sources of funding but banking," said Deborah Revoltella, chief economist for central and eastern Europe of UniCredit, the region's biggest lender. The task to carry whole economies through a downturn comes at a time when parent banks already face a double challenge: a likely sharp rise in loan defaults at their eastern subsidiaries and more difficult and expensive refinancing for themselves. "The international banks cannot solve this situation," Revoltella said. "They can do their part, and it's fundamental that they do their part but we have to take care of the other sources of funding which are missing now."

And it isn't only Austria who is worried, since Greek central bank governor George Provopoulos warned Greek banks only last Tuesday against transferring funds from the country's bank package to the Balkans, where they have invested heavily.

Regional Risks

In our view GDP growth is like to be negative in all CEE countries this year. In those countries “least” affected by the crisis (i.e. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia) GDP is like to drop at least 2-5%, while those countries worst affected (i.e. the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine) are likely to face double digit declines in GDP. In other words, in terms of expected output lost in the region this is as bad as or even worse than the Asian crisis of 1997-98.
Danskebank - CEE: This Looks Like Meltdown

The problem that the EU has in adressing the situation in the Eastern member states is that what we have on our hands is not only a banking crisis, there is also a strong credit crunch at work, one which is now having a severe impact on the real economies in the region. Most of the economies in the region are already in recession, and those that are not soon will be (I have intersperced a number of relevant graphs throughout this post which should give some general impression of what is happening). Thus these countries are all taking multiple hits at one and the same time.

1/ In the first place they have an economic contraction on their hands, in some cases becuase they are struggling with a steep decline of export demand from western Europe, in others because their externally financed credit boom has now come to a sharp and painful end.

2/. Most countries in the region have some form of foreign currency exposure, although at present this is largely household and corporate rather than sovereign. In a number of countries -notably Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics this is particularly onerous since most of the mortgages were taken out in euros or Swiss Francs, and the default risk is now rising as their economies either deflate (internal devaluation) or their currencies fall as part of the regional sell-off. The danger is that as the bailouts are implemented at local level this exposure is steadily transferred over to the sovereign level, creating a dangerous dynamic which can endanger future eurozone membership. States which default will be unlikely candidate members.

3/. These countries are also suffering the impact of significant asset writedowns, as those assets bought at very high prices during the boom - some at up to six times their book value - now have to be written down, further weighing on earnings and weakening financial and corporate balance sheets.

4/ Finally there is significant contagion risk. The comparatively small number of foreign lenders involved has lead IMF economists and the credit ratings agencies alike to repeatedly warn of how the risk that a seemingly isolated incident in one country may rapidly spread right across the region.

"I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the whole banking sector and financial system (in the region) rests on the response of parent banks," said Neil Shearing, economist at Capital Economics. "If they withdraw funding it's not very difficult to see how there would be a very severe financial crisis sweeping across the region, and the whole region en masse would have to go to the IMF," he said.

Governments in the region have already taken what measures they can. Most increased deposit guarantees from 20,000 to 50,000 euros following the EU October Paris meeting. Lithuania went further and upped the limit to 100,000 euros, while Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary all now offer unlimited protection. But this begs the question, who guarantees the government guarantees in the event they are called on.



So the problem has now become a very delicate one, since the banks want to maintain their presence in the region even while almost every factor imaginable is working against them. The latest such factor is the threat of credit downgrades for their core business in Western Europe, and Moody’s Investors Service warned only this week that some of Europe’s largest banks may be downgraded because of loans to eastern Europe, a warning which sent Italy's UniCredit to its lowest level in the Milan stock market in 12 years.

Moody’s argues there will be “continuous downward rating pressure” in the region as a result of worsening asset quality and western banks’ reliance on short-term funding. UniCredit’s Bank Austria subsidiary earned almost half its pretax profit from eastern Europe in 2007, Raiffeisen International Bank-Holding almost 80 percent and Austria’s Erste Group Bank more than 60 percent, according to Moody’s.

“The most risky parts of the western European banks’ businesses are in eastern Europe and when you decide to cut risks, you cut back on the most risky assets first,” Lars Christensen, an analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen, said by telephone today. “This could add further risk in the region as the economies there may face large current account deficits if funding from western European banks is withdrawn.”

As a result last Tuesday we saw a surge in the cost of protecting bank bonds from default, lead by Raiffeisen International Bank-Holding and UniCredit. Credit-default swaps on Vienna-based Raiffeisen climbed 26 basis points to a record 369 and those for UniCredit soared 23 basis points to an all-time high of 213, according to data from CMA Datavision in London. Credit-default swaps on Erste increased 24.5 to 307, Paris- based Societe Generale rose 6 to 116 and KBC in Brussels was unchanged at 240, according to CMA prices.

The rising cost of insuring against default by a “peripheral” European government is likely to weigh on the euro, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. “This remains an important background negative for the euro,” Steven Pearson, a strategist in London at Merrill Lynch, wrote in a note today. “European banking-sector exposure to Eastern Europe, often via foreign currency lending, is an additional euro negative story that is gaining air-time.” Emerging market central banks may move away from holding European government bonds in their reserves as widening yield spreads between debt of different euro-zone economies makes bonds more difficult to trade, Pearson said.

So Why Would The Euro Help?

Well, in the first place, four of the Eastern economies - Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, are effectively stuck, since their currencies are pegged to the Euro. They are in the unenviable position of being stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place. They are now faced with US depression type economic slumps, and massive internal wage and price deflation all at the same time. Would Euro membership help? Well lets look at what the IMF said in their most recent report on the stand-by loan arrangement for Latvia.

Accelerated adoption of the euro at a depreciated exchange rate would deliver most of the benefits of widening the bands, but with fewer drawbacks. Unlike all other options for changing the exchange rate, the new (euro-entry) parity would not be subject to speculation.

By providing a stable nominal anchor and removing currency risk, euroization would boost confidence and be associated with less of an output decline than other options.Euroization with EU and ECB concurrence would also help address liquidity strains in the banking system. If Latvian banks could access ECB facilities, then those that are both solvent and hold adequate collateral could access sufficient liquidity. The increase in confidence should dampen concerns of resident depositors and also help stem non resident deposit outflows.

However, this policy option would not address solvency concerns and has been ruled out by the European authorities. If combined with a large upfront devaluation, there would be an immediate deterioration in private-sector solvency, which could slow recovery. Privatesector debt restructuring would likely be necessary. Finally, the European Union strongly objects to accelerated euro adoption, as this would be inconsistent with treaty obligations of member governments, so this option is infeasible.

Basically, devaluating the Lat and entering the euro directly was the IMF's preferred option for Latvia, "euroization with EU and ECB concurrence" was the second option, and keeping the peg and implementing massive internal deflation only the third. The problem was that the EU, in its wisdom felt euro adoption "would be inconsistent with treaty obligations of member governments" - as would I suppose bailing out Austria and Ireland be "inconsistent with treaty obligations of member governments under the Maastricht Treaty. Go tell it to the marines, is what I say!

And this is not just Latvia, but four entire countries (little ones, but still countries) that are effectively being thrown to the wolves here.

Downward Pressure On Currencies, Upward Pressure On Interest Rates

Nor is the position of those with floating currencies - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania - much better, since their currencies are now coming under substantial pressure, and as a result defaults are growing, defaults which will only work their way back upstream to the Western Countries whose banks will have to stand the losses.

At the same time, the risk of a sharper, 1997 Asian-style adjustment cannot be excluded, given the similarities between Asia before the eruption of the crisis there in 1997 and the situation in emerging Europe. Beyond any considerations about valuation, the FX market may overreact as it did during the Asian or Russian crises in 1997 & 1998. To halt the downward spiral of currency depreciation, a substantial rise in interest rates combined with a tight fiscal policy under an IMF programme could be necessary.
Murat Toprak & Gaelle Blanchard, Societe Generale

Obviously there is now a sense of urgency here, and the warning signs are everywhere, for those who know how to read them. According to Zbigniew Chlebowski, the chairman for the Polish ruling party’s parliamentary group speaking in an interview earlier this week, the Polish government has been in official talks with the European Central Bank over joining the pre-euro exchange-rate mechanism “for several days.” So consultations are getting to be fast and furious.

And Hungarian, Polish and Czech government debt, which has been among the highest rated in emerging markets, is now being downgraded by bondholders. Investors are currently demanding 20 basis points more yield to own Hungary’s bonds than similar-maturity Brazilian debt, which is rated four levels lower by Moody’s Investors Service, according JPMorgan bond indexes. The risk of Poland defaulting is currently running at about the same as Serbia, ranked six levels lower by Standard & Poor’s, based on credit-default swap prices, while Czech 10-year bonds yield the most compared with German bunds since 2001.

“Everybody is running for the door,” said Lars Christensen, head of emerging-market strategy at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. “The markets have decided the central and eastern European region is the subprime area of Europe.”

The currencies of these currenciies are tumbling on investor concern the region’s economies are among the most vulnerable to the global credit crisis. Poland’s zloty has fallen 35 percent against the euro since August, the forint - which has fallen around 13% since the start of the year, and about 25% since last August -weakened to a record low of 309.71 this week. At the same time the Koruna hit the lowest level since 2005.

(Chart above - Polish Zloty vs Euro)


The zloty has risen - against the previous trend - by 3.2 percent this week, following a decision by the Finance Ministry to enter the market (on Wednesday) and started selling euros from European Union funds for zlotys. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday the currency must be defended “at any cost.” The Czech central bank stated it regards the buying and selling currencies to manage the koruna as an “exceptional” tool that it’s resisted using since 2002, with the implication that it may not be able to resist much longer, although interest rate hikes (as practised in Hungary) seem to be the more likely approach in the Czech Republic. Such gains as have been obtained for the zloty are likely to be short lived (intervention is a tool of desperation, not of strength, and rarely has any lasting effect) and they can hardly exhaust EU funding they badly need to spend on stimulus type projects in the face of the downturn defending the indefensible, as Russia has been learning to its cost in another context.

“It [currency intervention ]is for us an exceptional tool at our disposal,” Tomas Holub, head of its monetary policy department, said in a telephone interview today. “Of course it’s one of the potential tools, but so far no decision has been taken in this direction.”

After intervention the only real tool left is interest rate policy, and fear of further currency falls is now acting as a serious brake on monetary policy as the pace of economic contraction gathers speed in one country after another. “A lowering of interest rates at the current levels of the exchange rate is completely out of the debate,” Deputy Governor Miroslav Singer told E15 newspaper earlier this week. “The question is whether to raise, and by how much.”

Really the suggestion that all these countries simply traipse off to the IMF (one after the other) in search of help is shameful. There is simply no other word for it, shameful. As Oscar Wilde put it, losing one child may be an accident, but losing all your children, now that has to be negligence! Let them in, and let them in now, before the whole house of cards collapses on top of each and every one of us.

Postcript

This article is the second in a series of five I am in the process of writing on ways forward with Europe's financial and economic crisis.

The first was Why We Need EU Bonds.

Subsequent articles will deal with:

a) The need for Quantitative Easing In The Eurozone
b) What might a new Stability and Growth Pact look like?
c) Why as well as rewriting the banking regulations we also need to do something about Europe's demographic imbalances.

Update: The Danskebank View

With which I wholeheartedly agree.

This week the crisis in the CEE markets has intensified dramatically after the publication of a number of reports putting a negative focus on Western European banks’ exposure to the overly leveraged CEE economies. The crisis is clearly developing in an explosive fashion and there is a very clear risk of an Asian crisis style meltdown. The economies in the region are already in free fall, and at least one country – Ukraine – is dangerously close to sovereign default. Rapidly rising concerns have led policy makers across Europe to call for immediate action to avoid a dangerous collapse that potentially could spill into the euro zone. However, policy makers seem very divided on what to do in the current situation.

Earlier this week Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius called for coordinated action from the EU to try to solve the problems in CEE. Later in the week the World Bank’s president Robert Zoellick echoed Kubilius’ cry for help.

However, the EU Commission does not seem very excited about a coordinated effort to avoid meltdown. Rather Joaquín Almunia, EU monetary affairs commissioner, this week said that he would prefer a country-by-country approach to crisis management. In our view, a country-by-country approach to crisis management entails a number of risks, as there is a strong potential for contagion from one CEE country to another due to the significant integration in the financial sector across the region. Therefore, we think that there is urgent need for a more coordinated effort to stabilise the situation– otherwise this crisis will drag out and uncertainty remain elevated for an extended period.

Romania Accepts Budget Deficit Exceed 3% GDP, Industrial Output Falls Sharply

Romania’s premier-designate Emil Boc admitted today that the 2008 budget gap may exceed the European Union limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

“Our budget deficit stands between 3.5 percent and 4 percent of GDP this year, we’re outside the EU treaty,” Boc, who was nominated yesterday to be prime minister, said in Bucharest today.

The outgoing government had previously targeted a shortfall of 2.3 percent of GDP this year and 2 percent next year. The EU stability and growth pact requires governments to keep their budget deficits below 3 percent of GDP, and provides for financial penalties for countries that breach the ceiling. Even if the policy is likely to be flexibilised in 2009 given the severity of the economic slowdown, this stance is hardly applicable to the Romanian case, since the economy was in effect booming during most of 2008, and the bubble only finally burst during the financial crisis of October.

The spending program of the new government, which was published today by Romanian newswire Mediafax, includes plans to reduce spending next year to narrow the budget deficit to 2.5 percent, but we will see if this move is now enough to satisfy officials in Brussels and analysts at the credit ratings agencies. Romanian sovereign debt was effectively lowered to junk bond status by Standard and Poor's last month, and there is of course no possibility of euro membership with such a rating.


The draft also includes a 45 percent pension increase and an increase in the minimum wage to 600 lei ($208) from 540 lei as of Jan. 1, a reduction of the value added tax for staple foods, infrastructure investments and incentives to companies to stimulate growth and create jobs. Contrarian voices were thus not hard to find and Varujan Vosganian, the outgoing Liberal finance minister, told Realitatea TV in an interview today that the measures included in the working draft will push the budget deficit to 6 percent of GDP next year.



The Liberal Democrats and the Social Democrats, who formed a governing coalition with a two-thirds parliament majority on Dec. 14, also agreed to keep a 16 percent flat tax over the next years.

Industrial Output Falls Back Sharply In October


More evidence that a major contraction of economic activity is now underway in Romania came in today with the publication by Eurostat of the harmonised industrial output data for October. Output in Romania fell a seasonally adjusted 3.4% from September, and 3.2% from October 2007. In fact the rate of expansion in Romanian industry has been slowing since the spring, and as you can see in the chart below we are simply moving over to negative readings on a year on year basis. Still this data will now start to give us a nice handle on the actual rate of contraction as it takes place.





The Leu Being Dragged Down By The Zloty


Poland's currency is falling very sharply at the moment, as the slowdown in Western Europe reduces demand for its industrial products and an internal credit crunch slows down domestic demand. The zloty had its biggest intra-day drop in a month today, falling to its lowest level in more than two years, amidgrowing concern the economic slowdown is worsening. The zloty was down as much as 2.5 percent at one point, falling to 4.0812 per euro, its weakest level since July 10 2006, and passing through the psychologically important 4 per euro level. The zloty has been the worst performer over the last month among regional peer currencies when compared with the euro.

The Romanian leu fell today to 3.9462 per euro from 3.9426 late yesterday, while the Hungarian forint dropped 0.2 percent to 268.34.

Romania's Economy Heads Off Quietly And With No Fanfares Into It's Deepest Crisis in a Decade

Before I go any further, let me first apologise to any regular readers this blog may still have. Daddy has been very much away on business I'm afraid, and for far too long. What with all the things that have been happening out there, I just haven't had the time to put pen (or my thoughts) to paper on Romania. This absence has been doubly regretted by me at least, since while I think the economic outcome of Romania's boom-bust cycle is unfortunately all too predictable, we are still sitting in the waiting room, and the emergency dentist (which in this case will probably be the IMF) will only be able to get to grips with the patient when the root problem afflicting the tooth becomes more apparent (and simply unbearable), and at this point we are still some way little way off from that stage. Meanwhile we simply apply the antibiotics and the anti-inflamatories, in order to calm the troubled nerve as best we are able.


Controversy surrounding the Romanian economy is nothing new, nor, as Manuel points out in his post on the recent election, are Romanian politics strangers to tumult. Nonetheless the intensity of controversy has grown considerably of late, with a wide variety of assessments being offered concerning the likely impact of the intensifying international credit crisis on the short to medium term outlook for the Romanian economy. National Bank of Romania (NBR) governor, Mugur Isarescu, has been consistently arguing that the country should be able to avoid an excessively "hard landing"as the bank attempts to cool its evidently overheated economy and engages of fire-extinguising activities in the banking sector trying to control the impact of set of adverse external circumstances that are largely beyond its control. But most of these comments (or at least the more convincing ones) preceded the meltdown in the international financial markets which followed the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the fallout from which has surely had a strong negative impact on Romania's economy and greatly complicated the task of conducting macroeconomic policy which faces the new government to be be formed following last weekends elections.

The other complicating factor has been the "own goal" scored recently by the Romanian political process, with one politician after another proposing fiscal deficit raising policies, at just a time when the international financial markets have become extremely sensitive to just this development in countries which are, due to their large current account deficits, mainly dependent on external borrowing to finance their lending needs. The accommodative fiscal policy being run by the Romanian government has also been extremely ill advised at a time when the central bank was busy trying to cool overheating by applying a restrictive monetary policy. For policy to be coherent, the two main levers need to be operated in tandem, and not at cross purposes.

However, despite all odds, Romania has been hanging on in there, and GDP remained strong in the third quarter, a situation which has lead some commentators to use the term "gravity defiers" to describe those East European economies, like Romania and Bulgaria, that have so far avoided having a sharp adjustment, despite having evidently unsound macroeconomic fundamentals, and in particular unsustainably large external deficits.

Not everyone has been convinced by the positive posture being assumed from within Romania, however, and Fitch Ratings agency had already downgraded Romania's outlook (together with that of the Baltic states and Bulgaria) from stable to negative by August pointing out in the process that the economy was extremely vulnerable to external financial pressure. This association of Romania with the Baltics is not incidental, since the Baltic economies were until only very recently - as Romania is now - the fastest growing in the European Union (with rapid credit expansion and large current-account deficit, sound familiar) but have subsequently experienced a very sharp growth slowdown following a sharp tightening in domestic credit demand and a dropping-off of external demand after high internal inflation fuelled by very large annual wage rises destroyed competitiveness. Indeed both Latvia and Estonia are now in deep recession, and have moved in a matter of months from being the EU's fastest growing to being the EU's most rapidly contracting economies. This is precisely what the expression "boom-bust" really means.

The million dollar question at this point is whether or not the Romanian economy is destined to follow along the same path. In the analysis that follows I will basically be arguing that this is exactly where the Romanian economy is now headed. Some evidence to back the view can be seen in the latest reading on the EU economic confidence indicator (see below) which after months of trending slowly and steadily downwards suddenly lurched sharply south in October and November. Another detail which we would do well to bear in mind is that after many months of consecutive rises, seasonally adjusted retail sales fell in Romania (by 2.1%) in October over September. Indeed a growing quantity of anecdotal evidence now suggests that something important changed in Romania in October, even if we may yet need to wait several months to see the in the cold clear light of day the actual consequences of what happened. Another signal we have is that all is not exactly well, is that the number of newly-established companies increased only 0.7 percent in the year up to mid-November when compared with the same period last year, while bankruptcies soared according to the latest data from the Trade Registry Office (ONRC) - and in fact October was the month with most cases of insolvency, up a whopping 79 percent over October last year. In addition Romania's banks experienced a sharp liquidity crisis in mid October (see more below) and needed to borrow a total 49 billion lei (13 billion euros) in October from the central bank (using its lombard credit facility). This is 28 times the total amount borrowed between January and September 2008, according to NBR data. Banks only borrowed 20 million lei in lombard credits in September, while the total value of the loans issued was 1.75 billion lei between January and September.







Events Take Their Course

A capital-inflow-driven absorption boom has underpinned rapid catch-up growth but also fuelled macroeconomic imbalances. In particular, the external current-account deficit has risen to unsustainable levels. And, since mid-2007, headline CPI inflation has surged well above the central bank’s target, in part reflecting the firstround effects of food and energy price shocks. Rapid credit growth has raised risks to financial stability, although the largely foreign-owned banking system remains wellplaced to absorb shocks. In this setting, fiscal policy has been highly procyclical and lacked medium-term orientation.
IMF Article IV Consultation, July 2008

The IMF quote above basically spells out the general understanding economists have of what has been happening in Romania. Real GDP growth has been robust,but has increasingly been running up against capacity bottlenecks. Largescale emigration, notably to Italy and Spain, and high demand for workers, especially in construction, have resulted in tight labor market conditions. As a result, real wage growth has outpaced productivity growth, with buoyant public-sector wages adding to private-sector wage pressures. With core inflation under pressure, headline inflation has surged, partly owing to the firstround effects of shocks to energy and food prices, and to some extent reflecting the 2007 drought. However the initial shock has evidently moved over into second round effects, and price setters, faced with higher unit labor and other input costs, have been struggling to maintain their markups, as also indicated by surging producer-price inflation.

It is in this context that the fact that fiscal policy stance in 2007 was highly procyclical becomes a problem. The fiscal deficit increased in 2007 to 2.25 percent of GDP, up from 0.5 percent of GDP in 2006. Adjusted for the automatic effects of the booming economy on the fiscal position, the IMF estimated that the 2007 structural deficit rose to almost 4 percent of GDP. As a result, the fiscal stance was highly expansionary, adding an estimated net fiscal stimulus of 2 percent of GDP to an already overheating economy. Thus the Romanian economy was simply booming along just waiting for something unfortunate to happen, and, of course, true to form and as was to be expected, it eventually did.

Octobers "Sudden-Stop" Credit Crunch

Bank lending seems to have ground to a virtual halt in Romania in mid October (and October is the latest month for which we have statistics from the National Bank of Romania). After rising at a monthy rate of 4% (or a 50% annual rate) in September, total lending to households and non financial corporations actually fell in October (when compared with September) by 0.6%. For an economy which has been experiencing a debt driven consumer and construction boom it is hard to overstate the significance of this single fact. We seem to have what is known as a "sudden stop" in aggregate bank lending here, and the Romanian economy may now well fall rapidly into recession, following the tried and tested path so recently pioneered by Latvia and Estonia.

While RON denominated lending continued to advance slightly, the largest hit appears to be being taken - not really surprisingly - by forex loans, which fell in total by 1.5% in total month on month (-1.9% corporates, -1.2% households). Given that the RON strengthened slightly against the euro during the month the decline was probably less than it appears (since the book value in RON of forex loans falls when the Leu strengthens - and vice versa - and this revaluation is of course the great danger represented by a sudden Leu slide, since not only will the monthly payments on the mortgages shoot up, so too will the capital value of the outstanding mortgage, as anyone unfortunate enough to have taken out a loan in Japanese Yen, or CHF, surely already knows to their cost). But basically, since the currency fluctuated wildly but was actually up against the euro by 1.5% in October, we really do need to wait till we get to see what happened in November to have a clearer picture.

However, if we look back over the two months of September and October (where the currency fluctuations to some extent cancel each other out, but that overall the leu weakened 4.5% against the euro) then it is clear there has been a sharp slowdown in forex lending, and the effects of this slowdown will gradually be felt over the next six to nine months. Well, gradually or not so gradually, since new car sales (which obviously normally need finance) fell by nearly 30% year on year in October (to 20,478 from 29,347 a year earlier), according to the latest data from the Romanian Association of Automobile Producers & Importers. Basically if we look at the pattern which we can see in other economies which have been affected by the credit crunch, what started off as a slowdown in demand for cars as oil prices rose "transited" to an inability to finance purchases as oil prices fell back again. Hence the current difficulties of motor industry "majors" like Ford and General Motors.



Fiscal Deficit Issues

Another area of concern has been Romania's budget deficit, which stood at 2.4% in 2007, and is expected to widen in 2008 and 2009 . A number of factors are contributing to this steady deterioration:

1) the rising cost of government borrowing;
2) forecasts of a sharp decline in GDP growth for 2009
3) enactment of spending pledges made by candidates ahead of Nov-08 elections


Romania's loose fiscal policy stance and the growing public spending commitments were among the key reasons cited by credit ratings agencies for the recent downgrades in Romanian debt to what is effectively 'junk' status. Indeed Finance Minister Varujan Vosganian recently estimated that spending increases authorised by parliament before last weeks elections could widen the budget deficit considerably beyond the EU’s 3% of GDP limit, and some estimates suggest that, on a worst case scenario, it could possibly even amount to as much as 7% of GDP in 2009.

Indeed it looks as if the deficit could even pass the 3% level in 2008 (the year of such a rapid expansion, there is surely no excuse for this) since the 11 month budget deficit widened to 2.9% of GDP following a sharp drop in budget revenues over the last two months according to Varujan Vosganian last week. Vosganian told a press conference that budget revenues in October and November were 1.3 billion euros below the projected level.

Perhaps the highest profile decision in the context of the recent Romanian fiscal deficit "cause celebre" was the one taken on 8 October by the Romanian Parliament, when it agreed to a pay rise for teachers which was calculated to be in the region of 50%, and this against the explicit wishes of Calin Popescu Tariceanu, the prime minister, who headed the then minority liberal government. The main worry arising from the teachers’ pay increase, aside from the concerns over how it will be funded, centres on the impact it will have on the pay demands of other public-sector workers and, in turn, of private-sector workers. If such wage pressures are not resisted, then they will obviously only weaken further an already weakened Romanian competitiveness and in all probability would drive inflation back above the 10% mark in 2009. This would be the result in normal circumstances, but the Romanian economy is not in normal circumstances right now, and it is highly unlikely that the present credit crunch and the pressure from the international financial markets will leave time for this inflation spiral to run its course. Much more urgent matters are likely to make their presence felt first.

Varujan Vosganian seems to be tirelessly explaining in the face of deaf ears that the proposed increase could push the budget deficit up in the direction of 7% of GDP in 2009, as no provision had been made to raise taxation, and the outgoing government issued an emergency ordinance on October 28th postponing the increase, following a warning from the IMF about the likely fiscal consequences.

Defenders of the recent decisions, however, are quick to point out that Romania's accumulated public debt, at around 12% of GDP, is still extremely low. But this is to miss the force of the macroeconomic argument against running such annual deficits at time of high GDP growth. Basically, at this point, the Romanian economy has been overheating (and has not been stuck deep in recession), so the principal macro argument would be in favour of fiscal surpluses (and substantial ones, say 3% or 4% of GDP) to try and drain excess demand from the system. This is doubly the case when you look at the underlying difficulties of applying standard monetary policy (the central bank has been raising interest rates since to try and keep inflation better under control) in a context where foreign exchange denominated loans have been freely available at what effectively amount to negative interest rates.

Although the government has made an effort to promote a more prudent fiscal policy, the temptation to win more voters has proved to be stronger. Consequently, the government decided to increase the benchmark index for calculating individual pensions by 20 % to RON 697.5 as of November earlier than originally planned. The benchmark index was already increased in November 2007 by 35 % and by another 7.5 % in January 2008. It will be further raised next January to complete the promised reform of the pension system aimed at bringing the average pension to 45 % of the average gross wage from the level of 35.5 % in November 2007. Doubtless we will soon here complaints about how "internation financial speculators" have brought the Romanian economy to its knees, but such voices would do a lot better looking at the degree of responsibility exercised by Romanian politicians in the face of the world's worst financial crisis in over 75 years, in a climate were concerns about procyclical fiscal deficits are known to be widespread.

Substantial Inflation Pressures Remain

Inflation lies at the heart of the mechanism which has been steadily - via the expansionary fiscal posture - undoing the Romanian economy, and, right on cue, Romanian inflation increased again in October, hitting 7.4 percent, after dropping back to 7.3 percent in September. Consumer prices were up 1.1 percent month on month.

In the Romanian context it is impossible to relate this inflationary pressure exclusively to rising energy and food costs, doubly so since these latter have now been falling steadily since July. The Romanian economy has been running at a much faster pace than it can comfortably sustain, and nowhere has this been clearer than in the strong upward pressure on wages, with net wages growing at an annual 24.6 percent in September while unemployment continued to hover near a 16-year low. In fact annual net wages increases have averaged around 24% over the last 6 months (see chart below), while real wage increases (allowing for inflation) have averaged around 15% throughout 2008.




Monthly unemployment has been running at around 3.9% of the labour force (or 350,000 people) according to data from the Romanian Labour Ministry, or at around 5.9% according to the EU harmonised rate published by Eurostat (the difference between these two numbers is due to the different methodologies and criteria used). In either case these are historically quite low rates for the Romanian economy, and it needs to be borne in mind that there are at least a million Romanians (or another 10% of the labour force) working abroad (largely in Spain and Italy) most of them sending monthly remittances home to their families and relatives, remittances which in their turn fuel domestic demand, demand which the economy lacks sufficient capacity to meet without putting pressure on inflation.

Of course, having made the point so forcefully about how much of a problem inflation has been in the Romanian economy, I think I should point out that this problem may well be set to disappear, or at least become somewhat less important in the general picture, should the Romanian slowdown prove to be as dramtic as I fear it might. We could move very rapidly from a situation of undercapacity and overheating to one of excess capacity, and sharp cooling as domestic demand folds and exports stagnate. Naturally everything depends on what happens to the Leu, since if we see a further substantial weakening in the currency this in itself will tend to add to inflation pressures, depending on how large a fall in the currency we are talking about.


Monetary Policy and the Leu

The Romania central bank which has been using monetary policy as best as it is able to try and fight the inflation threat, kept its key policy rate - which is the second highest in the EU after the 11% rate in Hungary - unchanged at 10.25% in October, although they did lowered reserve requirement on leu deposits (to 18% from 20%, as of November 24) in an attempt to ease the growing pressure on domestic liquidity which has been so evident since the mini financial crisis of mid October.

Further monetary tightening (following the Hungarian example) might have seemed a more prudent strategy, particularly given the current comparatively low level of the real policy rate (only 2.75% above inflation), the continuing inflation pressures, the continuing loose fiscal stance and the recent credit rating downgrade from S&P. There is also the credibility issue to take into account, since Romanian inflation is still running well above the central bank year end target of 3.8%. On the other hand, if we take account of the rapid deterioration in the internal economic climate since October, then exercising caution may have been more sensible than it seems at first sight. The problem is that the Romanian central bank - like its Hungarian counterpart - is now caught between the need to protect the value of the Leu (given the prior level of forex borrowing) and the need to try to offset the rapid and dramatic decline in internal demand.



Just what kind of pressure we could see on the Leu in the coming weeks was illustrated during the days between 10 and 20 October, when the tremendous pressure on the currency (see spike in chart above) forced the Romanian cenbank to intervene directly in the foreign exchange market to defend the currency. Questions remain about the extent to which any local tightening policy can work while private indebtedness continues to be fueled by forex denominated (largely euro) loans and the NBR is sure to face increasingly difficult decisions as growth slows in the coming months

In fact central bank Governor Mugur Isarescu argued that the bank responded to an "attack on the leu'' which had drained lei from the market and driven overnight interbank market rates sharply higher. The Banca Nationala a Romaniei sold 40 million euros on October 10 for lei on the interbank market and the Finance Ministry sold 291 million lei of three-year bonds on October 16. Overnight Interbank Bid Rates (ROBID) soared to 19 percent on October 17 (up from 16.53 percent on October 16) as banks frantically tried to get their hands on lei. Rates have subsequently come back down again, but at the start of December they were still hovering in the 12% to 13% range, well above the 7% to 8% range of January 2008, and also well above the 10.25% targeted central bank policy rate. Basically these rates seem to have gotten completely out of alignment with central bank policy towards the end of August, and there seems to be little evidence (or likelihood) that they will be coming back into line anytime in the near future (see the time series for yourself here - also anyone looking for a quick and handy list of banks with exposure to the Romanian market, the quoting banks for ROBOR are ABN Amro, Bancpost, Banca Transilvania, BRD Groupe Société Générale, BCR, CEC, EximBank, ING, Raiffeisen Bank and UniCredit Tiriac Bank).

Some analysts question whether Romania can fin­ance its 59 billion euros in external debt without International Monetary Fund support of the kind secured by neighbours Hungary and Ukraine if such "attacks" continue to occur. The leu has now slipped 7 per cent against the euro since August, while the Romanian stockmarket is down 71% in the year to date and the leu has weakened by 21% against the US dollar over the same period.

Romania's GDP Continues To Grow Strongly


Romania's economy continues to put in a very strong performance and grew by an annual 9.1 percent in the third quarter, driven forward by the continuing consumption and lending boom, although most observers - including the the government - are agreed that all of this is now about to slow, and sharply. Indeed the government itself has forecast that growth will slow to about 4.5 percent next year, although others consider this to be rather overoptimistic under the circumstances and the big question is, just how "sharply" is sharply? Are we about to see one of those famous "hard landings"? There are reasons for believing that we may well be.

At this point it is very hard to see just how far the economy actually slowed in the third quarter (at an annual rate it fell back from 9.3% to 9.1%, which really doesn't seem like very big beer), in the first place since we still lack detailed data, and in the second because don't publish or supply to Eurostat seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter data, which is really the most informative number we could get are hands on at this point, if it existed. So we are really stuck with "proxies" like short term retail sales data, and confidence indicators (unfortunately Romania doesn't seem to have much in the way of PMI surveys).

Despite all this, you could say, couldn't you, that Romanian GDP growth still does look pretty robust. You could say this, that is, until you look at what actually happened to Latvian GDP growth following the onset of a credit crunch in that country. As we can see in the chart below, the Latvian economy was cruising along at a nifty 11% annual growth rate until the third quarter of 2007, at which point things started to go nastily wrong, and headline GDP growth fell off a cliff, reaching the dizzy low of around minus 5% a mere four quarters later. And of course Latvia is now stuck in a very, very deep slump.


So just what happened? Well basically, the Latvian economy was being driven to grow way too fast by a rapid increase in foreign exchange credit. And Latvia, like Romania, had large numbers of workers outside the country, busily sending home remittances, while wage inflation at home went up and up. As we can see in the chart below, this credit was effectively cut back sharply in the spring of 2007, and down came the Latvian economy on the back of the cut. As we can see in the earlier chart I presented, year on year increases in Romanian forex lending have now been slowing since the mid summer, and I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that there is a strong danger of following the Latvian path, especially after the "short sharp shock" of mid-October.

So just when will Romania enter recession? At this point it is hard to say, but if the Latvian pattern is anything to go by, negative year on year growth could arrive as early as Q3/Q4 2009, and we might even see quarter on quarter contractions starting with Q1 2009 (although we won't necessarily know this, since, as I say, the data we need simply isn't published).

Government Aid Package

In response to this deteriorating outlook the outgoing government did announce a stimulus package, which is scheduled to take effect in January, and involves items like exempting reinvested dividends from a 16 percent tax, giving companies a bonus of 1,000 euros for every person they hire who has been unemployed for more than three months and faciliating 500 million euros worth of investments and other aid for farmers. There is also an allocatation of 3 billion euros for job-creating investments, lower social insurance payments and a 250 million-euro credit line for medium and small businesses via a cash injection into state-owned bank CEC.

The government will grant aid of as much as 50 million euros to companies planning to invest more than 100 million euros and create at least 500 jobs, according to the plan. Investments of less than 100 million euros that generate at least 300 jobs stand to receive aid which could total up to 28 million euros. It will also give companies a 5 percent reduction in their tax bill in exchange for paying taxes on time and exempt new car sales for a year from a "pollution tax'' that ranges from 150 euros to 700 euros per car.

Credit Downgrades


But all of this is likely to be of little avail, since it is mainly small scale counter cyclical stimulus if the international financial standing of Romania continues to deteriorate. In late October the international ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) cut Romania’s long- and short-term foreign-currency sovereign credit ratings from BBB-/A-3 to BB+/B, and its local-currency long-term rating from BBB to BBB-. S&P pointing out the growing risks posed by high and rising private-sector leverage and dependency on an increasingly uncertain external financing channel. Given the size of Romania’s macroeconomic imbalances, they argued, the economy is highly vulnerable to any sudden tightening in external financial conditions which could cause a sharp downturn in economic growth.

On November 10 Fitch followed suit, and downgraded Romanian debt - together with that of Bulgaria, Hungary and Kazakhstan - two notches to what is effectively 'junk' status (specifically BB+) as a result of their "concerns about the macroeconomic policy framework in Romania" and the country's ability to avoid a severe economic and financial crisis. Noting the widening current account deficit - which is expected to exceed 14% of GDP this year - a deficit which Fitch believes has been fuelled by excessive credit growth, the agency argued that a much stronger policy adjustment, especially in the fiscal policy area, would have been needed to avoid a currency crisis. Fitch specifically drew attention to the private sector foreign currency balance sheet mismatches, and argued that any imminent currency crisis would "require substantial external financial support from the international community to prevent a sovereign credit crisis."

Fitch specifically singled out Emerging Europe as the most vulnerable Emerging Market region to the deterioration in the global financial and economic environment owing to the fact that so many countries have large current account deficits and relatively high levels of short-term external debt, and that these render them particularly susceptible to reduced capital and financial market flows (including from foreign parent banks).

Since the onset of the credit crunch in August 2007, Fitch has now downgraded the foreign currency ratings of nine countries in emerging Europe (by a total of 11 notches), and this contrasts with just three upgrades that have been made over the same period. Eight countries are now on Negative Outlooks - which a record level for the region - while no countries are on Positive Outlooks, signalling that ratings remain under downward pressure.

IMF Aid In The Pipeline?

Obviously with the EU institutionally bogged down in its own issues of core and systemic bank bailouts, it is clear that the community's ability to offer meaningful assistance to Romania is going to be limited. Thus all eyes in Eastern Europe have been looking hopefully over in the direction of Washington, and the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has already offered aid to Hungary, Iceland, Serbia and Ukraine to help them cope with the difficult coktail of a credit drought, falling investment and shrinking government revenue. Romania, has so far not openly sought IMF help, although this does not mean that channels of communication and "dialogue" have not been opened. The sheer size of the current account deficit and the short term increase in the very sensitive area of government spending may make it increasingly difficult to fund the country’s $75 billion in external debt without IMF aid. In a statement to the local media, Juan Jose Fernandez-Ansola, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) senior representative for Romania and Bulgaria recently observed that "The initiative to increase teachers' wages by 50% may need to be reconsidered. We estimate the impact on the budget would be modest in 2008, but would reach over 0.75% of GDP in 2009. In addition, if the increase were extended to other public sector employees, the impact could reach over 4% of GDP in 2009. This would send a wrong signal to financial markets." So it is not hard to see the kind of tack the IMF will be taking in any negotiations.

However, there are important differences in the monetary systems of Romania on the one hand and the Baltic states and Bulgaria on the other, and these differences may facilitate rather than complicate the issue of IMF aid. The Baltics and Bulgaria all operate some variant of the currency board system, whereby the currencies are pegged to the euro at a fixed exchange rate (or within a narrow band), a feature which effectively prevents these economies from conducting their own independent monetary policy, thus placing the entire burden of macroeconomic adjustment on fiscal policy. The appreciation of the euro against the US dollar damaged the competitiveness of those economies vis-à-vis those economies whose currencies are linked to the dollar. Romania's managed-float on the exchange rate side has, in contrast, provided it with greater flexibility and some ability to utilise monetary policy as part of its macroeconomic stabilisation programme.

Thus Romania has been able to resort to some degree of exchange rate depreciation to preserve external competitiveness over the past 12 months, while the central bank pushed up interest rates to keep real rates at positive levels and contain inflationary pressures. The complicating factor here has been the availability of substantial foreign exchange credit, at rates well below those imposed by the NBR. This has undoubtedly taken much of the cutting edge off central bank monetary policy in the short term, although as we are seeing, this supply of cheap credit has now, suddenly, "run dry".

At the end of the day there is substantial agreement between all the main institutional actors (leaving aside Romania's own political class) - the NBR, the IMF, the EU Commission and the ECB - that Romania's external deficits are unsustainable in the long run; that fiscal policy has been ill-advisedly pro-cyclical; that wage growth has been excessive; that rapid credit-growth has been fuelling an unsustainable growth in consumption; and that a sharp and significant correction is now about to take place.

The Immediate Outlook


This year's extremely good agricultural harvest has undoubtedly offered strong support to headline GDP growth in recent quarters, but this fortuitous virtuous circle may well repeat itself in 2009. On the other hand, the financial position of private households, after becoming ever more strained as domestic interest rates have steadily risen, together with the costs of servicing a growing volume of private debt, may well now deteriorate substantially as the lack of available credit and the rising layoffs in manufacturing industry exert an ever-tighter grip. In general terms, private consumption was already slowing before the onset of the credit crunch in October, and increased by 12.2 % yoy in Q2, following the record high of 14.3 % yoy in Q1.

Investments also continued at a strong pace in Q2, driven mainly by new construction projects (up 34.8 % yoy), while investments in equipment was already slowing (down to 23.8 % yoy in Q2). In the first half of the year the construction sector absorbed 20 % of total investments in the economy, and it is this sector which will now be particularly hard hit.

Slowing construction activity is now expected for the rest of the year, and should become more pronounced as we enter 2009 and new project steadily dry up. Prices of new housing and real estate transactions generally have been losing momentum in recent months, especially in the capital city Bucharest. This slowdown can also be observed in the national construction activity index, which has seen the value of construction works drop to an annual 19.1 percent rise in October (down from 28.3 percent in September, and down even further from the average 33 % yoy increase registered in the first half of 2008) . Month on month, construction growth slowed to 5 percent in October from 8.5 percent in September. More importantly, the number of new building permits issued has now been showing a steady monthly decline. Evidently the volume of construction activity continues to rise (even if at a slower pace) since existing projects need to be completed - credit crunch or no credit crunch, and regardless of whether there will actually be buyers for the completed properties. But at some stage activity may well grind to a near halt, as the appetite for new building projects suddenly evaporates. This is what we have seen in other similarly affected economies, and there is no good reason why Romania should be any different here.

This view is reflected in the recent press statements made by Gabor Futo, executive manager of real estate developer Futureal Group. Futo takes the view that no new real estate projects will be started in the next two years and that 90 percent of the forthcoming ones already announced will be called off for lack of financing. Futo testifies to the way in which banks are now much more cautious in making loans and how developers are experiencing increasing difficulties in obtaining financing. Futureal recently started work on the new commercial center "Gold Plaza" in the northern city of Baia Mare. The center will have 30,000 square meters - all of them available for rent. The project aims to be completed in the first quarter of 2009 and will cost about 97 million euros. The company is a leading developer in Central and Eastern Europe, with projects worth more than 1.6 billion euros, including more than 6,000 residential units and some 500,000 square meters of commercial area.

And, of course, it isn't only the construction sector which is getting hit. Since the problem is the availability of credit rather than interest rates per se, then anything which can't simply be bought on a credit card will be affected, and first in line here is the Romanian auto industry which could register its first bankruptcies towards the end of the first half of 2009 according to Alin Tapalaga, Manager of Porsche Inter Auto, the retail division of the Porsche Romania . Tapalaga feels the most affected companies will be those who have recently built showrooms, and especially in the past year using bank loans as finance,.

The Romanian banks themselves are expecting a massive drop in lending to individuals in the last quarter of the year, especially for mortgage loans, despite forecasts of cheaper land and properties, following a worsening in lending conditions, according to a recent survey carried out by the central bank. Not surprsiningly, credit cards are the only lending product for which banks expect to see a slight increase in use in the last quarter, but even here they expect a much smaller increase than the one registered between July and September 2008.

And all this reticence to spend comes despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that property prices are now falling. Three-room apartments in Bucharest have fallen by around 15 percent since the beginning of the year according to the the ZF real estate index. ZF suggest that prices nationally have dropped by 2 percent to 3 percent over the last six months, following stagnation or even slight increases earlier in the year. ZF compile their index by analysing prices asked by sellers on the anuntul.ro website. The value at which the deal is actually closed may be as much as 20 percent below the asking price they say. Whereas a typical seller was asking an average of 140,000 euros for a 70-square metre three-room apartment in January, the price reached 118,000 euros in November, or over 20,000 euros less. The sharpest monthly decline was registered in November, when the average price per square metre reached 1,686 euros, 5 percent lower than in October, according to the ZF analysis.

Exporting Your Way Out Of Trouble?

With domestic demand now set to fall sharply, as people buy less property and large ticket items, while companies prune back investment in response, the only way forward for Romania to achieve economic growth - and pay off its debts - would appear to be through exports, since the fiscal policy arm has, as we have seen, been basically frittered away during the good times. But here we hit a big snag, since Romania runs a large goods and services trade deficit. In fact, between January and September 2008, Romania's balance-of-payments current account posted a deficit of 12.7 billion euros, up 14.8 percent over January-September 2007. The deterioration was largely a result of the wider trade deficit (13.7 billion euros), which was up 11.7 percent over the same period of last year. On the positive side exports did grow (19.4%) more rapidly than imports, but that will be of little consolation if exports need to drive an economy where domestic demand is either flat (best case) or declining.

And funding this deficit could become increasingly problematic, since foreign direct investment now covers only around one third of the gap in the current account, which means that foreign debt is on a strong upward spiral. Effectively this situation makes Romania susceptible to capital outflows in the medium term, and, were this to happen it would trigger a harsh real adjustment for Romania's economy and its citizens.

Romania needs to attract capital inflows (including FDI) in the region of 15 billion euros per year to cover a current-account deficit which is expected to exceed 13% of GDP. In 2008 alone it is estimated that the net external indebtedness of Romania will rise by some 6 billion euros. Non-publicly guaranteed external debt came in at 31.501 billion euros at the end of September, up 25.9 percent from year-end 2007. The NBR has, of course, built up a strong foreign exchange reserves (27 billion euros at the end of November, or around 8 months imports) and can more than likely ride out the change in market sentiment in the short run. Also foreign direct investment of 7.2 billion euros covered 56.6 percent of the current account deficit over the January-September period, with equity stakes and reinvested earnings making up 52.7 percent of the total, while intra group loans accounted for the other 47.3 percent.

But at the end of the day, having the reserves to ride out the crisis (with or without the aid of the EU and the IMF) isn't really the problem. The problem is how you turn a credit-driven internal-demand-boom economy into one where new-found export competitiveness means external demand drives growth. And how you do this, while protecting all those heavily-forex-leveraged households form the more or less inevitable downward correction in the value of the leu. Obviously the path from one point to the other passes through a hell of a lot of what we economists call "creative destruction", but lets just hope for the sake of all those who have to live through this "correction" inside Romania don't find the whole process a far too painful one.