Romanian Leu Ends Steady vs Euro

"Volumes were moderate, interest in the leu is low these days and most probably it will continue to trade around that level by the end of the week", one dealer told SeeNews.

The leu has been losing ground against the euro in the last two weeks as concerns about how the country's new government will handle an expected economic slowdown fuelled negative sentiment among investors towards the currencies of emerging markets and especially towards the leu, dealers have said. They suspected a central bank intervention on Tuesday, aiming to stop the local currency from slumping further and since then the leu has been traded around the 4.3 mark, which, traders said, was difficult to go beyond one.

Romania's central bank, BNR, set its reference exchange rate at 4.2917 lei per euro on Monday compared to 4.2655 lei on Friday. For the U.S. dollar, the BNR set the reference exchange rate at 3.2336 lei versus Friday's 3.2139 lei.

Turnover on the interbank leu deposit market rose to some 2.95 billion lei on Friday from 2.0 billion lei on Thursday. The BNR will issue Monday's figures on Tuesday.

Interest rates on overnight leu deposits fell to an average of 10.06%/10.97% on Monday from 10.87%/11.90% on Friday.

Following are Monday's average bid and ask quotes of commercial banks on Romania's interbank market. They were calculated at 1100 (0900 GMT) by the BNR, based on data provided by 10 commercial banks (in pct):