NBR has enough money to buy a space shuttle

The Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves have gone beyond the three billion-dollar threshold. The foreign currency surplus on the interbank market on the one hand, and the lack of pressure on the ROL/USD exchange rate from low interests on the other, allowed the National Bank of Romania (NBR) to increase its foreign currency reserve on a monthly basis.

That is why the National Bank of Romania in late May registered a little more than three billion dollars, therefore managing to achieve this year’s foreign currency increase goal at rather low costs.

The central bank this year had planned to increase its foreign currency reserve by 500 million dollars at first, but this target has already been exceeded.

From the 2.5 billion dollars in hard currency reserves by December 31, 2000, the reserve reached 3.037 billion dollars at the end of the first five months of this year.

NBR vice-governor Cristian Popa says this year’s foreign currency reserve growth target might change, but this is only up to the decisions about the monetary and hard currency policies the National Bank of Romania chooses to enforce, as well as to the economic and political outlook.

NBR in May succeeded in increasing its reserve by 149.8 million dollars. This trend was helped by a 180.6 million-dollar input collected from the sale of foreign-currency denominated T-bills issued by the Finance Ministry on the domestic market, by 54.1 million dollars in net purchases of the central bank from the forex market and by 18.9 million dollars in revenues derived from managing the international reserve.

Ever since early this year, the central bank has definitely been a buyer of foreign currency from the interbank forex market, collecting more than 450 million dollars over the first five months.

As for outputs, 74.5 million dollars were paid as instalments and due interests on the direct foreign public debt collateralised by the Finance Ministry in May. Other net payments reached 29.3 million dollars.

NBR’s gold reserve maintained at 105 tonnes, but the current trend of the international prices boosted its value to 898.4 million dollars, so that the total international reserves of the National Bank of Romania, that is foreign currencies and gold, amount to nearly four billion dollars.

The due payments for the direct foreign public debt pledged by the Public Finance Ministry to be made by the end of this year amount to 925 million dollars.