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Romania’s finance ministry announced some sort of "tax on greed" for banking sector:

Romania’s finance ministry plans to introduce a tax on banking assets from 2019, seeking to cap the interbank ROBOR interest rates at a reference level of 1.50 percent, minister Eugen Teodorovici said on Tuesday.

(..) the new tax would rise gradually, from zero percent for an ROBOR rate of 1.5 percent, to maximum 0.9 percent of banking sector assets for a ROBOR rate of 3.01 to 3.50 percent.

However, this value seems to be significantly lower than inflation rate (about 4-5%).

I am wondering why the government force such a small value and not let the market settle this value.

Question: What is the rationale of capping interbanking rates to values significantly lower than inflation rate?

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    Setting interest rates below inflation benefits borrowers at the expense of savers. One should therefore ask, who are the borrowers, who are the savers, and (perhaps most importantly) in which group do we find the people setting policy?
    – Ben Voigt
    Dec 31, 2018 at 22:33
  • @BenVoigt - I think one the most important borrower is the State itself since the Social Democrats (party in power) have trouble maintaining the 3% budget deficit / they ended other people money.
    – Alexei
    Jan 1, 2019 at 6:39
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    So there's why they don't let the market set the rate -- the government doesn't want to pay higher interest on its debts.
    – Ben Voigt
    Jan 1, 2019 at 7:32
  • Sounds plausible given that "Greece, Romania, Poland and Portugal were the only EU Member States to record bond yields that were above 3.00 % in 2017, while there were 19 Member States where yields were below 2.00 % (15 of which had yields below 1.00 %)." (from ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/…) But also note "Average short-term interest rates in the euro area turned negative (-0.02 %) in 2015 and this pattern was continued in 2016 and 2017 when the latest annual rate was -0.33 %." Jan 2, 2019 at 22:18

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