Against the US dollar, the leu’s indicative gained 0.4% on the day to 4.0081 units. The central bank set the leu’s reference rate versus the Swiss franc at 4.0434 units, slightly up from 4.0583 Friday.
Ciprian Dascalu, ING Bank Romania chief economist, stated that the exchange rate will probably stay in the central bank’s comfort interval, of approximately 4.38 – 4.52 units, just like in the past two years.
“Based on NBR FX reserve data, we estimate the NBR sold around €0.5bn over the past two months, and trades clustering at the higher end of the recent EUR/RON range indicates the NBR capping the upside move. For today, we could see a move towards 4.47/EUR as early trades already saw the RON near 4.48/EUR,” ING Bank Romania said in a note to analysts and investors Monday.
In the first trading hour, the national currency traded at nearly 4.5 against the euro and ranged from a high of 4.4744 per euro and a low of 4.4955 per euro in the first half of the day.
At around 1:00 pm, it traded at 4.4762 to the euro.