San Marino. Libera: “Banking system, a new framework of internal and international rules is needed”
“The necessary path of transparency implemented on the system must now find an answer in terms of effectiveness in the management of banking institutions and this will only be possible if the policy is able to define the new framework of internal and international rules, a framework that we do not think be a priority of this government ”.
This is what Libera claims in a note about the San Marino banking system which, for the opposition party, “has experienced 10 of the worst years of its existence.
The crazy decision, attacked in the late 90s and early 2000s directed to the Christian Democrats in alliance with the Socialist Party, denounced by the Commission of Inquiry, gave birth – Libera – to a financial center which, without any rules, has granted seven new banking licenses giving industry executives a chance to take advantage of a river of gray money, when not blackand to grant loans to friends of friends generating the greatest financial disaster that San Marino remembers: the generation of a mass of non-performing loans equal to more than half of the entire loans granted.
The river of money (gray and black) has been stopped by heavy actions implemented by the OECDnon-performing loans, on the other hand, remained within the system, generating bankruptcies that only the State with its own assets and then with the debt, was able to heal by preventing the savers from suffering the serious damage produced by the managers “.
For Libera “Nobody wanted this disaster to come to light, perhaps to be able to continue to manage things the old way, putting the dust under the carpet. But today we have the real picture, thanks to the finally transparent operation and to that of 2019 on Banca Cis which also revealed the serious damage generated by management that no one had previously had the courage to shoot.
This is the situation that the remaining banks find themselves facing, but with different, if not diametrically opposed positions in terms of capital and market position, but converging on some specific points that the former President of Ente Cassa di Faetano denounced. openly. First of all, the memorandum with the Bank of Italy, considered the passport for the San Marino financial system to emerge from its isolation and dialogue with Europe.
The objective seems to have been ‘forgotten’ by the Governissimo of the 44 which is delighted with the result obtained through an accounting artifice for Cassa di Risparmio, without considering, however, that the policy of lending to households and businesses in the area has thinned, generating serious damage to the real economy, and above all it does not consider that foreign markets for San Marino banks are completely closed. The only way that is adopted to put the budgets back in order is therefore that of drastic reduction of costs, generating serious problems for, suppliers and the State.
Then there is the theme of very high central bank management costswhich closes its balance sheets in surplus to the detriment of the profit and loss account of private banks which have to pay large sums for costs no longer justified by the small number of managed capitals.
The State and the Central Bank are contesting the bureaucratization of the system and the accentuation of control policies that are so cumbersome as to induce the staff of the banks to be equally rigid in their relations with customers to the point of dismissing them. There is a strong need for the management for the decisions that will be adopted for the NPLs, a will necessary for the government since the vehicle set up to manage them is already the government has not found for a long time, but the government has not found the right balance. to issue the implementing decrees that provide for the assignment and management of these credits. If the management of these will then be the same as is happening for those of Banca Cis, it is better to prepare for the worst.
Hence the strongest criticism, masked by the government thanks to the “handshake” policy, the missed result in relations with Italian, European and international institutions. All real and concrete criticisms that prevent the recovery ”concludes Libera.