BASA-PRESS:

Remittances to reduce due to global economic crisis, IMF representative in Moldova says

EEN1419 / The global economic crisis will lead to a decline of the labor demand in the European countries and will affect Moldovan citizens working abroad; consequently the volume of money transferred to Moldova will reduce too, stated the Resident Representative of the IMF in Chisinau, Johan Mathisen, to the press on Friday. According to Mathisen, in the current circumstances Moldova should undertake measures to attract more investments because as a result of the recess, investment activities will decline. Foreign inv estors will stop coming here, and foreign investments in Moldova will stop for a while, the IMF representative stressed.
Mathisen also stated that the financial crisis will influence on the real sector of the Moldovan economy, but less the banking one. From Mathisen’s viewpoint, the Moldovan banking system is quite prepared to resist some agitation, and the National Bank has enough resources to minimize the impact of the crisis.
Earlier, a number of officials and independent analysts stated that the risk of a crisis situation in Moldova is minimal, because the speculative capital accounts for an insignificant share both in the real sector, and in the banking system, and therefore no foreign investment retrieval will occur.


INFOMARKET:

Influence of the world financial crisis on Moldova through the financial sector will be minimal - Johan Mathissen.

This was announced on Friday by the permanent IMF representative in Moldova during the meeting of the debatable club «Free economic zone» devoted to «The world financial crisis and Moldavian banks». As he said, the bank system of Moldova is rather stable to resist the crisis. The Moldavian bank sector is well capitalized, as well as has high liquidity in comparison with the other countries. Besides this, for the last years NBM has considerably increased its currency reserves (up to $1,8 billion), which is the shock-absorber factor during any crisis: if the crisis affects the bank system, NBM will have resources to reduce its consequences to minimum. At the same time, recently IMF has reconsidered the forecast of economic growth in Euro zone – up to 0 %. It can mean reduction in demand for the Moldavian export. Besides, it can affect the remittances of the guest-workers due to reduction in demand for labor force in the sectors of construction and services, etc. It will subsequently lead to import decrease that will affect the budget incomes. According to Mathissen, the world financial crisis can also stimulate decrease in volume of direct foreign investments in Moldova. //10.10.2008