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NATIONAL BANK OF ROMANIA
BNR is a public institution, created as an effect of an organic law. More
then 100 years ago. The law, dated on April 17th - 29th 1880, "for the
setting up of a discount and emission bank, under the name of Romanian
National Bank", offered the exclusive privilege of this institution to
issue the Romanian state currency.
Since the beginning, BNR was all the time the only emission bank, even if
its economical functions the property regime or the institutional
dimensions were altered significantly and sometime radically. BNR was
created as a joint stock company with an initial capital of lei 12 mil.
gold. Only the third part from this share capital was state property while
the rest belongs while the rest belongs to individuals, whose interests
were strong linked with the liberal upper bourgeoisie.
The organic law from 1991, confirm that BNR has a share capital of 5
billion, entirely state owned, that property regime being considered by the
legislators more proper for the new functions of the bank (planned as in
case of west central banks with an authentic functional and decisional
independence).
Today, BNR is not a usual bank because, regard credit operations, the bank
make transactions only with the state represented by the budget authority
and the financial institutions.
On the other hand, BNR is subordinated to the government; it is an
institution that independently manages the public stocks, having specific
economical and social changes.
BNR keeps its own accounting based on generally accepted commercial
principles, the bank having the possibility to close its activity on profit
or, on the contrary, with losing.
In spite of this, in all these years since 1880, the bank has never
registered damages. The profit is imposed by the Finance Ministry, as an
income to the state budget. The net income is distributed, according to the
Romanian law, by the Executive Board of the bank, which is named and
subordinated to the Romanian Parliament.
The first and the most important economical and social change of BNR
consists in supplying the monetary circulation in the whole country, with
treasury note and metallic coin.
The monetary values emission of the Romanian state is, by law, the monopoly
of the BNR. From physical and valuable point of view the issue is
permanently and the number of treasury notes and metallic coins being in
circulation are the result of their putting in and backing out. The
treasury notes and metallic coins value represents the most important
position from the BNR liabilities balance sheet.
As regard the assets of the bank, there are three types as are the
following:
. loans granted to the banking companies;
. loans for the budget of the state;
. loans granted to abroad (from the country gold reserve or currency
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