The “green” credits granted to companies in Romania amounted to 5 billion lei in March of this year, an annual increase of 129%, Florin Dragu, head of the service Financial Stability Directorate of the National Bank of Romania (NBR).

“At the moment, “green” lending is still a market in information and also has a high potential for increasing the level of financial intermediation. The latest data, related to March 2024, show us that their value is set somewhere at 5 billion lei, on the corporate side, in a significant increase. If we look at a year ago, the rate is somewhere around 129%. Also, on the flow side, we see that it represents about 5% of the total loans. green”, but if we look from the perspective of the entire portfolio, we see that the financing stock is still at a relatively low level, about 3% of the total loans granted to companies. From the perspective of distribution, most loans go to the part of “green” buildings, respectively, about half of the “green” financing. The next segment is represented by electricity and heating-cooling systems, followed by the energy efficiency part, Dragu emphasized, according to Agerpres.

According to the BNR representative, in the segment of “green” mortgage loans, their value reached approximately eight billion lei, an increase of 69%, in annual terms, and represents approximately 8% of the total loan portfolio.

Regarding the “green” bonds, the data presented by Florin Dragu show that, in Romania, the amount was 720 million euros, in 2023.

“This amount is somehow the cumulative value of what had been achieved in the last two years, from the perspective of the initiatives that we carry out. The BNR has undertaken several actions at this level that aims to increase awareness of the effects of climate risks and , also on improving the availability of data on “green” lending.

This aims to support both financial institutions in the green transition and non-financial companies by increasing their capacity to understand climate risks and to increase their long-term readiness to take advantage of all these opportunities (…), he said the BNR official.

He also referred to the results of a semiannual survey among approximately 12,000 companies in Romania, in order to find out the ability to identify the effects of climate risks.

“The degree of awareness, but also the ability to identify the effects of climate risks is still incipient and significantly lower within SMEs, compared to large companies. If we look at the degree of response, we see that 50% of small companies have response, while at the corporate level the share is somewhere around 80%. From the perspective of access to financing, about 60% of the responding companies believe that it will not be affected by climate change. We have noticed that banks have made significant progress in the last three years years regarding the integration of these elements in risk management. Practically, the majority of institutions – about 80% of them – answered that they use international standards and about 10% that they intend to implement them in the next year. Compared to two years ago, when I carried out the same questionnaire, the percentage was somewhere around 30%”, said Florin Dragu.