Banks bought more than 104 million euros from their clients on Monday, in contrast to a daily average that has remained at around 70 million euros, or even less, since April.
Another 76 million euros were sold to banking clients. Taking into account the activities of the National Bank of Romania (NBR), which according to the dealers allegedly bought some 70 million euros, the total volume of forex market transactions amounted to 449 million euros.
However, where did all this foreign currency come from, so early in the week? The interbank market is facing a complete mystery. Since there was no huge transaction that could have justified the soaring numbers, dealers can only make assumptions.
"There were no high value transactions. Though it's true that the total volume of transactions on Monday was very large, we have no real explanation - no single identifiable cause behind this result," Cristian Parvulescu explained, head-arbitrager of the Romanian Commercial Bank (BCR).
"We don't know of any high-end transaction that could have triggered such a large figure. There were, however, many transactions carried out by regular clients and, probably, by speculators," continued Cristian Sporis, treasurer of Raiffeisen Bank.
"Monday used to be a traditional day for big purchases by clients, but this time we really don't have an explanation as to the obviously large volume of deals. We are probably dealing with a persisting surplus from the exchange offices," stated Cristian Ditescu, senior dealer at ABN AMRO Bank.
The central bank does not have any answers, either. "We still don't properly know where the money actually came from," added Adrian Vasilescu, advisor to the National Bank of Romania's Governor Mugur Isarescu. Still, the National Bank does know that the larger amounts of currency are being exchanged into ROL at exchange offices. "We don't believe that foreign currency sales will drop. There are probably more Romanians working abroad and perhaps some of them have found better, higher-paid jobs," said Teodor Buftea, head of NBR's Monetary Policy Department.
Some 422 million euros were exchanged into ROL in January at exchange offices, with another 459 million euros following in February. However, the sales of euros peaked in March, when natural persons exchanged almost 600 million into ROL.
According to estimates, the central bank has bought 100 million euros in the past two days, and used the pressure created by the sales of foreign currency to deal with the delayed depreciation of the ROL.
Consequently, the ROL continued to lose ground against the US dollar and the single European currency. One euro was worth 40,506 ROL yesterday, according to the official exchange rate set by NBR, whereas one dollar was worth 34,221 ROL.
According to Buftea, the past years' data shows that natural persons would rather take their business to the exchange offices, instead of dealing with commercial banks. The NBR official stated that some of the money sent back home by Romanians working abroad is used to meet their families' everyday needs, which explains why more euros are being exchanged into ROL.
Moreover, large amounts of money might have reached the exchange offices through foreign tourists and visitors, whose numbers appear to be on the increase.
razvan.voican@zf.ro ; liviu.chiru@zf.ro
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