Ana Săbiescu
Romania"s Central Bank yesterday performed a new REPO operation injecting 1.69 billion lei in the inter-bank market, in government bonds with 1-month maturity, with a 10% annual interest rate.
11 banks took part in yesterday"s auction, and dealers said that afterwards, the annual interest rate on the market hovered around 10-12% per annum, near the monetary policy rate of 10% per annum.
This is the third large REPO operation performed by the NBR this month, as the Central Bank has injected more than 10 billion lei in the market.
In the first part of yesterday"s trading session, the average interest rate was 11.89% per annum for overnight deposits and 12.39% per annum for overnight loans.
Also, the exchange rate dropped 1.62 bani yesterday, down to 4.2218 lei for one Euro, after last week it had passed the level of 4.24 lei/Euro.
REPO operations are used by the NBR to inject liquidity in the market, whereas reverse REPO operations are intended to drain excess liquidity from the market.
The Central Bank has said on several occasions that it would carefully monitor the evolution of the inter-bank market, as well as that of the economy, so as to ensure long term price and financial stability through government reverse REPO operations with government bonds.