Interenterprise Arrears in Transforming Economies: The Case of Romania

This paper reviews Romania's experience with interenterprise arrears during 1991 with the purpose of extracting lessons that might prove useful for other economies in transition to market-based systems. The rapid growth of interenterprise arrears poses a serious policy problem in many of the transforming economies of Eastern Europe, as well as in the republics of the former Soviet Union. Among the more striking cases is that of Romania, where gross interenterprise arrears grew almost 18-fold (to about 50 percent of GDP) in only one year. This paper discusses the development of these arrears and the policies implemented by the authorities to try to resolve the problem.