"I found out this year that in China, as communist as the country may be, there is no state pension system. Therefore, people are desperate to have savings", chief economist of Romania's Central Bank (BNR) Valentin Lazea declared for HotNews.ro at the end of an economic symposium - "Aspects of the saving process in Romania". "The best thing the state can do is to stop making guarantees to the pensioners or to the people about to retire, as if everything would be cosy and nice", he added.

Lazea Told HotNews.ro that the reason why South-East Asian countries save 30% of their GDP is because they have no state pension system and no state guarantees for one. According to him, the last thing of people's minds in Romania is to economise for a pension. The retirement income seems to amount to just 1% of Romanian citizens economies, he claims.

"A series of economic and institutional factors discourage savings and you can't change them: an inflation that tends to drop in the long run, an exchange rate that tends to increase in the long term, dwellings that tend to become more expensive with the passage of time. The only thing that can be done to encourage savings is this incertitude which the state needs to maintain regarding the rights of the persons to retire", BNR's chief economist said.

"Between us, the retired are not the poorest. Statistics show that the families with one parent are the poorest, as a proof that the retired manage to save money", Lazea concluded. "I found out this year that in China, as communist as the country may be, there is no state pension system. Therefore, people are desperate to have savings", chief economist of Romania's Central Bank (BNR) Valentin Lazea declared for HotNews.ro at the end of an economic symposium - "Aspects of the saving process in Romania". "The best thing the state can do is to stop making gua