Higher transaction volume on forex market in March

"Transactions carried out on the Bucharest forex market in March climbed to almost 32bn euros, thus marking the first increase, against the same month of the previous year, after a series of 16 consecutive monthly declines. In absolute terms, too, March trading volumes are the highest from February 2009, a hectic time for financial markets, NBR data show. March brought yet another extraordinary reversal: for the first time in the past years, the volume of foreign currency purchases from clients topped the one of foreign currency sales to clients, as a daily average.

Dealers say foreign investors' interest in Romanian T-bills, also reflected in the rapid yield decline, prompted new money inflows. Inflows of foreign currency, which needed to be converted into RON, were thus reflected in the volume of foreign currency market operations. Dealers in March also suspected discrete interventions on the part of the central bank, which seems to have bought foreign currency to counter RON growth pressures, in the context where the exchange rate had got close to the 4 RON/euro threshold, coming from over 4.2 RON/euro at the start of the year." by Liviu Chiru