Romanian Leu Ends Cheaper vs Euro on Fitch Downgrade

Fitch Ratings said earlier on Monday it has downgraded Romania's long-term foreign currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'BB+' from 'BBB', long-term local currency IDR to 'BBB-' from 'BBB+', and short-term foreign currency IDR to 'B' from 'F3'. The outlooks on the sovereign ratings remained negative.

Romania's central bank, BNR, set its reference exchange rate, used for statistical purposes, at 3.7482 lei per euro on Monday, compared to 3.7271 on Friday. For the U.S. dollar, the reference exchange rate was set at 2.9066 lei versus Friday's 2.9135 lei.

Interest rates on overnight leu deposits were set at an average of 13.88%/16.93% compared to 13.92%/17.47% on Friday.

Turnover on the interbank leu deposit market rose to 1.243 billion lei on Friday from 1.2 billion lei on Thursday. The BNR will issue Monday's figures on Tuesday.

Following are Monday's average bid and ask quotes of commercial banks on Romania's interbank market. They were calculated at 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) by the BNR, based on data provided by 10 commercial banks (in pct):