site.btaBoth Banks and State Set Key Priority on Euro Area Entry, Banks Association Head Says

"Both the banks and the State set a key priority on the accession to the eurozone," Association of Banks in Bulgaria (ABB) Executive Board Chairperson Petia Dimitrova said here on Wednesday. She spoke at a Conference on "Together towards Success: Stable Financial Ecosystem and Bulgaria's Progress to the Eurozone", organized by the ABB.

Dimitrova said that Bulgarian banks keep January 1, 2025 as the target date for the euro changeover and will be ready for this. "We will be the ones who will mainly handle the adoption of the euro, the investments that the banks will make in this process are the largest in the country, and their costs will be entirely borne by us," she pointed out.

The banker stressed the benefits of the changeover: a favourable impact on loan financing, development of the capital markets, the ECB as lender of last resort, and improvement of the business environment. "Bulgarian banks keep 12% of the deposits in the form of minimum required reserves with the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), which approximates BGN 16 billion, at zero income. In Europe, banks keep 1%, and the ECB pays 4% on these excessive reserves," Dimitrova said, adding that this income will go directly to the State through the BNB.

The ABB's recommendations related to the euro area entry include an advice to people to deposit their cash and convert it as early as possible before the eurozone accession date so that their transition would be smooth, the banker said. She specified that this will be one of the awareness campaigns that the ABB will carry out so that the process could go smoothly. "Nobody will lose anything, everything will be done automatically," he pointed out.