The euro traded yesterday at a five-year record high of RON 3.0910, and the Central Bank (BNR) posted a rate of RON 3.1112/euro, a level recorded last on May 28, 2002.
Currency dealers have indicated that the euro could further depreciate in the coming days. "The euro will probably drop to 3.05 lei or even lower," Raiffeisen Bank's chief dealer, Cristi Sporis, told Business standard.
Former President of the state-owned CEC national savings bank, Eugen Radulescu, said the leu's appreciation will be beneficial in the long-run. "The appreciation will spur economic restructuring, still necessary, because exporters will have to survive on a market with low euro exchange rates, and this can only be done through restructuring," he said.
Radulescu added it is likely that the Central Bank will not intervene in the exchange process, "because speculators will appear only when the exchange rate reaches a certain level. They are coming now, but if they see that the emperor has no close, or that the strengthening of the leu is only nominal, they will leave of their own volition, without being chased away by BNR," Radulescu said.
