"An upward trend for interests on RON loans can be expected, however it won't happen because of inflation-related reasons, but because of the extremely high demand as more and more people are thinking of borrowing in RON, after seeing that the euro did not drop further from its summer level," says Robert Rekkers, general manager of Banca Transilvania, the fifth largest lender on the market.

There have been a rising number of signals on the market about imminent price increases both for euro loans, which were influenced by the developments on the foreign markets, and for RON loans. However, most analysts anticipate the NBR will keep the monetary policy rate unchanged.

The euro lending is already beginning to feel the effects of a double price rise, both because of the international reference rates taken into account by many local banks, especially for mortgage loans, and because of the depreciation of the RON, mainly experienced by those who took out loans during the summer, driven by the euphoria induced by a spectacularly weak euro, as well as by the introduction of relaxed lending norms by the first banks, which allowed for an indebtedness cap of up to 70%.

Rekkers says that in Banca Transilvania's case, the introduction of the bank's own lending norms for individual customers early in August led to a doubling in the volume of all types of loans sold.

"It's just crazy, we're barely coping with it," Rekkers says.

Gabriela Nistor, the bank's retail manager, explains the number of credit applications has almost tripled. She says the details of the lending norms were discussed with the NBR so as to allow customers with low incomes to get at least as much as they did when the old standard regulations were in place for the entire market.

Rekkers adds that at the end of August, the volume of retail loans granted by Banca Transilvania am