Romanian Leu Touches 3.8-per-Euro Mark at Closing

Fitch Ratings on Monday 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. Fitch also revised the long-term foreign currency rating of five Romanian banks, two of them being the country's top lenders by assets, to 'BBB' from 'A-' and 'BBB+', all of them with a negative outlook.

Hungary's forint, another emerging market currency, also traded cheaper agianst the euro after Moody's downgraded the country's sovereign rating and assigned it a negative outlook, one dealer told SeeNews.

Romania's central bank, BNR, set its reference exchange rate, used for statistical purposes, at 3.7835 lei per euro on Tuesday, compared to 3.7482 on Monday. For the U.S. dollar, the reference exchange rate was set at 2.9706 lei versus Monday's 2.9066 lei.

Interest rates on overnight leu deposits were set at an average of 13.16%/16.25% compared to 13.88%/16.93% on Monday.

Turnover on the interbank leu deposit market rose to 1.7 billion lei on Monday from 1.243 billion lei on Friday. The BNR will issue Tuesday's figures on Wednesday.

Following are Tuesday'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):