The Euro falls below 4.1 lei

The European currency fell below the 4.1 lei threshold on Friday.

On Friday, the NBR displayed a reference exchange rate of 4.0881 lei/Euro, at the lowest level of the last year.

The last time the Euro was quoted at a similar level was on March 30th, 2010, when it had reached 4.0729 lei.

Laurian Lungu, managing partner at Macroanalitica, said that the appreciation of the leu is due to the improvement of the macroeconomic outlook, compared to the situation of countries such as Portugal and Greece, which are not doing that well from this point of view.

Still, economic analyst Daniel Ionescu has a different opinion. He said that the recent gains of the leu are caused by the fact that there is a loss of confidence in the dollar on the international financial markets and in the relationship between the dollar and the Euro.

Daniel Ionescu said: "There are two more factors that provide an explanation for the gains of the leu: the 1.2 billion Euros tranche which was disbursed by the European Commission and the intervention of the major powers in Libya. The depreciation of the Euro and the dollar in relation to the leu don"t actually have anything to do with the domestic market".

He also thinks that the NBR does not have anything to do with the appreciation of the leu and it did not intervene in the market.

The national currency continued to appreciate on Friday, against the American dollar. On Friday, the exchange rate of the Central Bank reached 2.8876 lei/dollar, reaching a new low. The American dollar hasn"t been traded at such a low level since January 19th, 2010, when the exchange rate was 2.8687 lei/dollar.