| Romania has room to manoeuvre in order to cope with the international financial crisis: minimum compulsory reserves can be used to give a boost to the economy and there is the advantage of the 16% flat tax, whose level can be easily raised to secure the necessary budget revenues, states Claudiu Cercel, BRD's vice-president of financial markets. He recently attended a meeting of French investors with finance minister Varujan Vosganian in Paris. "French investors (...) are confident in the medium and long-term economic perspectives, as Romania is a EU member, with major financing programmes". Thus, he considers it exaggerated that Romania is included in the " junk" category. Cercel states that against such a troubled backdrop, doubled by the pre-election atmosphere and given the structural shortages being quoted with relation to Romania, "results are remarkable: the exchange rate has been harnessed and interest rates have been tempered". Cercel says minimum compulsory reserves can play the role of a stabilising fund and believes they should be used when there are no other ways to secure liquidity on the market. Cercel has been working for BRD since March 2003. As a vice-president, he runs the daily operations of the Financial Markets Pole. |