335m euros bought by NBR in March

National Bank of Romania last month bought more than 335 million euros from the interbank market, which level, although anticipated by the central bank’s officials at some point, is beyond expectations. The euro surplus attracted from banks without too high costs, was enough to help the foreign currency reserves follow an upward trend, so that they reached 6.76bn euros by the end of March. According to the information released by the central bank, NBR’s interventions for buying the currency surplus on the interbank market were the main drive behind the reserve increase. The downward trend of the EUR/ROL exchange rates, manifest in the first half of March, made it necessary for NBR to intervene, particularly because, two months through the year, the national currency was gaining ground in nominal terms against the two benchmark currencies. The progress of the foreign currency reserves was followed by an increase in the value of the gold reserves to 1.16bn euros, bringing the total international reserves to 7.93bn euros. The other flows related to foreign currency were balanced. The 52.7 million euro payments in form of instalments and interests on the direct public debt secured by the Finance Ministry were covered by the revenues derived from the reserve management, 15.4 million euros, in addition to other net inflows of 37 million euros. ZF