The leu drops to new record low

Sales of foreign currency dominated the local foreign currency market, taking the euro's exchange rate to RON 3.4350/€ 1 since the session opened, a new record low this year, after an average exchange rate on the interbank market of RON 3.4112/€ 1 computed by the National Bank of Romania (BNR) at the end of last week.

A drop in the national currency was observed in past auction sessions, due to closings made by speculating investors, influenced by both international financial markets dominated by risk aversion and the negative perspective of Romania's rating by the Standard & Poor's rating agency.

The National Institute of Statistics (INS) yesterday made public the inflation rate for October, of 0.79 percent, which has raised the annual inflation to 6.84 percent, two percentage points above the 5 percent superior limit of the inflation target range set by BNR for 2007.