FinMin aggressive borrowing makes RON more expensive on currency market

Interest rates for very short-term placements on the interbank market yesterday leapt by more than a percentage point, moving from the 3% tier to the 5% one per annum, showing the cash surplus accumulated in the second half of last year has started waning.

Dealers say the aggressive borrowing the Finance Ministry has operated since the start of this year and late January quarterly tax payments to the budget have swallowed up all the RON flooding the market until recently.

“Everything started from the large payments to the budget of late January. Banks had hoped they could delay setting up minimum reserves toward the end of the period, but the money does not come back as fast from the Finance Ministry. At the moment, there may be a slight cash shortage on the market, and people had got used to surpluses all the time since August,” commented the dealer of a domestic bank.

The volume of payments to the budget is not known. In January, the Treasury borrowed almost 7bn RON, against the planned 4.6bn RON. In the first week of February, the state absorbed another 2.8bn RON, almost as much as it had planned. For the entire month, issue plans total 5.4bn RON.