The ROL/USD exchange rate seems to have reached a standstill, as the dollar’s value in ROL has not budged lately. During their last visit in Romania, the representatives of the International Monetary Fund told the central bank that, should this trend continue, pressure would build up and Romania’s international competitiveness would be affected.
However, the National Bank of Romania (NBR) was already planning to start a certain nominal depreciation of the domestic currency against the dollar.
“We have no more reasons to hold on to the stability of the ROL/USD exchange rate,” the NBR governor Mugur Isarescu recently said.
Over the past few days, the market has finally sent the ROL/USD rate over the 33,300 ROL level, accounting for a 5.4% depreciation as compared to the end of last year. In the meantime, the domestic currency has lost 16.9% to the euro, while inflation since December 2001 has reached 12.5%. Yesterday’s 33,316 ROL/USD quotation is still much lower than this year’s record-high depreciation, which was posted in May – 33,582 ROL/dollar. Also in May, the depreciation rate peaked to 6.1%, but the dollar has taken a declining trend ever since, with the ROL depreciation shrinking to 4.1% in July, following the euro’s soaring on the international markets. Even the state budget for this year had been built around a higher annual average rate, of 33,581 ROL for one dollar.
So far, the currency market has been against a significant depreciation of the domestic currency. That is precisely why the central bank had a rather rough summer on the market, being compelled to buy no less than 700 million dollars in order to counter the influence of the euro/dollar rate oscillations on the international markets, which repeatedly pushed for nominal appreciation of the ROL against the dollar.
“Everyday, we would fight to take the money from the market. Whenever we saw the exchange rate going below 33,000 ROL, we were frightened,” says the NBR governor Mugur Isarescu.
Following consultations with the IMF, the central bank recently made several decisions on the currency policy to be implemented by yearend. So far, no details have been released.
“NBR does not generally release its forecasts on the exchange rate,” Adrian Vasilescu, advisor to governor Mugur Isarescu, told Ziarul Financiar.

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