Access Constraints of Romanian Peasants in Relation to the Formal Financial Sector

This paper analyses the financial deepening position of both Romania’s financial market in general and the rural financial market in particular. The indicator M2/GDP (20% in 1995) shows that Romania’s financial depth is far less than might be expected for a country with its level of GNP. Therefore, stability enforcing macro- economic, legal and monetary policies are necessary to create the enabling environment for effective and efficient financial intermediation which is crucial in the overall Romanian economic transformation process. However, Romanian rural bank intermediaries either do not wish to extend their services to small scale agriculture and rural enterprises or they do not have the scope in terms of variety, quality and efficiency of instruments/services to deal with this type of clientele. While the Romanian rural financial market is relatively "deep" with regard to the number of intermediaries, it is by no means so with regard to its monetarization and service array. Therefore, the paper goes on to propose possible financial innovations that intermediaries engaging in rural finance may seek to adopt in order to become capable of efficiently supplying their services to small scale rural enterprises.