Tirana businesses demand lower interest rates

TIRANA, June 14 – Tirana’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced it is negotiating with commercial banks to lower interest rates and extend the deadline for their payment, a measure which would directly influence on the development of businesses. The Chamber’s chairman, Nikolin Jaka, says that state mediation is needed to improve the situation in some crisis-hit sectors, such as the construction industry which has suffered from lack of liquidity.
“We are negotiating with second-tier banks to review the situation of their relationships with customers, i.e which businesses should be helped by easing terms and conditions for the payment of their loans,” said Jaka in a press conference.
Tirana’s Chamber of Commerce also hailed the Finance Ministry’s call to the central bank to lower the key interest rate, currently at 5.25 percent unchanged during this year.
Jaka says that commercial banks have no reason in keeping lending standards tight now that the banks’ loan portfolios have considerably increased.
“Now even the Finance Ministry has joined our request for a lower key interest rate. We want almost the same measure proposed and implemented by the US government or the European Central Bank” said Jaka.
The central bank lower the key interest rate by 0.5 percentage twice in January and October 2009 but has kept it unchanged since then fearing the depreciation of the national currency and inflation rate.