Legislation

The leasing activities are regulated in Romania by the following legislative regulations:

decree nr. 28 from 26th January 2006 regarding the regulation of some financial-tax measures;

law nr. 287 from 6th July 2006 for the modification and completion of the Government Ordinance nr. 51/1997 regarding the leasing operations and the leasing societies;

law nr. 241 from 12th July 2007 for the abrogation of some regulations, through which remissions or remedies of the customs duties of some leasing objects are granted.

The leasing is a commercial operation through which a party, named lessor transfers for a determined period of time the right of usage of an object, whose owner he is, to another party, named lessee, at his request, in exchange of a periodical payment, named installment, and at the end of the leasing period the lessor undertakes to respect the right of option of the lessee to buy the object, to renew the leasing contract without changing the nature of the leasing or to stop the contractual rapports.

According to the content of the installments, the leasing can be financial leasing and operational leasing.

The fiscal code stipulates that any leasing contract, that fulfills at least one of the following conditions, falls into the category of the financial leasing:

a) the risks and benefits of the right of usage over the leasing object, will be transferred to the user once the leasing contract becomes effective;

b) the leasing contract stipulates the express transfer of the right of usage over the leasing object to the user, once the contract ends;

c) the user has the option to buy the object, once the contract ends, and the residual value, expressed in percents is smaller or equal with the difference between the normal maximal functioning period and the period of the leasing contract, compared to the normal maximal functioning period, expressed in percents;

d) the leasing period outruns 80% of the normal maximal functioning period of the leasing object; for the purpose of this definition, the leasing period includes any period for which the leasing contract can be prolonged;

e) the total value of the installments, except the accessory charges, is higher or equal with the input value of the object.

Any leasing contract, concluded between the lessor and the lessee, that transfers the risks and benefits of the property right to the lessee, except for the risk of recovery of the object to the residual value, and that doesn’t fulfill any of the conditions foreseen at letter b)- e), is considered to be an operational leasing contract; the risk of recovery of the object to the residual value exists only when the buying option isn’t put expressed at the beginning of the contract or when the leasing contract stipulates expressly the restitution of the object, once the contract ends.