The rate of growth of profits of Romanian banks continued to accelerate in April regardless of the international financial crisis, problems with liquidity and high costs of branch networks, informed Ziarul Financiar.

The overall positive result of the banks in our northern neighbor amounts to 370 million euro for the first four months of the year. In Romanian lei, profit has increased by 65% compared to the same period of 2007. Profits of banks for the first three months of this year marked 48 - percentage increase on an annual basis.

The trend of rapid growth in net profit of banks in the first quarter was confirmed in April when it went up by 38% over the same month of 2007.

The data confirm once again that Romanian banks cope well in terms of increasing interest rates and have managed to significantly increase their profits from the difference in interest rates without endangering their market share.

The best positioned players in the market are those that have sufficient funds available before the tangible decline in liquidity in the market and have begun to compete for funds borrowed from customers.

Notwithstanding the rapid growth of lending, disparities in profits of the 42 banks are big, and the average earnings in banking system are only 9.2 million euro in late-April.

Bank statistics show no setback extremely from the ambitious plans of banks to increase their market share. Romanian banks have opened 1.090 new branches in the period April 2007 - April 2008 thus the total number of branches reached 5.814. The number of newly appointed employees for the same period reached 7,800. The total number of employees in banking system was 67.970 in the end of April.