The leu gains against the Euro and the Swiss Franc

• Part of the off-shore players were interested in the interest rates of the leu, according to a dealer

The Romanian currency yesterday gained against the Euro and the Swiss Franc (CHF). The National Bank of Romania yesterday posted a reference rate of 4.2219 lei for the Euro, down 1.83 bani below the quotation of the previous session, this being a seven week low. The last time the exchange rate was lower than yesterday was on July 8th (4.2037 lei).

The Swiss Franc continued to fall for the second session in a row, reaching 3.5729 lei, 1.81 bani below the previous session. The exchange rate reached a new low compared to July 22nd, when it stood at 3.5721 lei. Over the last three sessions, the Swiss Franc has depreciated with over 19 bani, from 3.7683 lei/franc.

Vlad Muscalu, dealer at ING Bank, said that compared to the previous days, yesterday"s volumes were bigger, but not by much. He added: "We are talking about a single day so we shouldn"t extrapolate, and call it a trend".

Another dealer in the market, who did not wish to disclose his name, said that there was only one explanation for yesterday"s strengthening of the leu: "Some of the off-shore players were interested in the interest rates of the leu".

Given this aspect, there was no correlation between the evolution of the leu in relation to emerging markets, as according to him, the zloty and the forint stagnated yesterday.

A dealer quoted by Mediafax said: "It is hard to explain this continuous strengthening of the leu, which is also accompanied by trading volumes bigger than the average. There a few banks selling Euros and buying lei, and furthermore, overnight the leu gained on the foreign markets.

This is probably position building with a view of profiting from the strengthening of the leu, but this is atypical, because other currencies in the region, such as the zloty and the forint, are almost stagnating".

On the interbank market, the interest rates for attracted overnight deposits (ROBID) yesterday fell to 5.76% from 5.85%, and the interest rate for the overnight placed deposits (ROBOR) fell to 6.26% from 6.35%. The fall in the interest rates comes after, on Monday, the NBR lent 336.8 million lei for a week to two banks, via a repo auction, at the policy rate, of 6.25% a year, in an attempt to cap the increase of the interest rates on the money market and to increase liquidity of commercial banks.

ON Friday, the Central Bank held another auction by which it lent 1.506 billion lei to six banks, due to the fact that deposit withdrawals by customers reduced the amount of liquidity available. As a result, the banks in question were forced to raise the interest rate above the key rate of the NBR, in order to attract deposits.

Unlike the Euro and the CHF, the American dollar yesterday strengthened against the leu, gaining 0.32 bani, up to the level of 2.9272 lei.

Since the beginning of the year, the national currency has gained 1.12% against the Euro, and 8.68% against the American dollar. On the other hand, the Swiss franc has gained 4.34% against the leu since the beginning of the year.