The leu traded close to 4.5 units in the first hours of the session, from 4.4832 per euro in the last trades of 2014.
“The leu opened (down) near 4.5 to the euro, on good volumes. Traditionally, the leu starts the year on a depreciation trend, and we could see it above 4.5 to the euro in January,” a dealer told MEDIAFAX.
In the first hour of Monday session, the leu traded between 4.4925 and 4.4990 units, on higher-than-average volumes.
Elsewhere in the region, the Hungarian forint lost 0.8% against the euro, while the Polish zloty traded down 0.2%.
On international markets, euro is down to a nine-year low against the US dollar, a trend which generally leads to a depreciation of emerging currencies.
In the last day of 2014, the Romanian central bank set the leu’s exchange rate at 4.4821 per euro, close to a nine-month low reached in the previous session, at 4.4834 per euro.
Compared with the official rate of December 31, 2013, of 4.4847 per euro, the leu’s reference gained only 0.06%.