ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

354Gheorghe Pîrvu, Ramona GruescuConcerning the policy of the usury interest rate applied to Romania inthe process of the liberalization of capital account we have noticed that startingwith the year 2001 the efficiency of the interest rate channel grows better andbetter, being able and identify a co-integration relationship between themonetary policy interest and the market interests, witch in fact shows theefficiency of the channel of monetary policy transmission interest rate.The National Bank of Romania adopted a policy of continuous loweringof interest rates as a consequence of both the necessity of disinflation andespecially in order to reduce the risks linked to the liberalization of capitalaccount. Despite all these, the tendency to reduce the interest rates has beeninterrupted twice, for short periods of time (2000-2001, 2003-2004) to preventsome economical side-slip.Starting from 2005 as a result of the liberalization of non-residentsaccess to term deposits in national currency, RNB policy interest in national hadto face new constraints. The existence a raised differential of internal interestrate in comparison with the external one could have encouraged the speculativeentrances of capital witch could have created inflationist pressures and wouldhave led to the appreciation of the exchange course on short term.According to specialists, RNB confronted the Tosovsky dilemma witchrefers to the contradiction appeared between the necessity of reducing the ratesof interest in the process of liberalization and the requirements concerning theaggregate demand control from the perspective of the disinflation process, witchcould imply higher rates of the interest.Fig. 2 – The evolution of monetary policy interest starting from 2003 to 2005.Under these circumstances, the strategy adopted by RBN was one ofcontinuing the reducing of monetary policy interest from 20, 75% in may 2004to 12,5% in April 2005, respectively 7,5% in October 2005 (image 2). At thesame time the temporary split of monetary interest from the effectivesterilization interest witch had a lowering tendency.