The foreign currency reserves held by the Romanian central bank increased by EUR 555mn to EUR 31,236mn at the end of June 2014, the monetary authority announced. The reserves were still more than EUR 1bn down on the year. However, they are at a satisfactory level, according to central bank.
Furthermore since only part of the reserves are owned by the central bank – with the other part being either borrowed (from the IMF) or comprising the commercial banks’ required reserves, the monetary authority has to actively manage them in order at least to cover costs. The adverse market circumstances in 2013, and particularly the volatile exchange rates, generated losses from this activity for the central bank.
While the certain recovery in June was caused by inflows from the EU budget, the gradual decrease in the central bank’s reserves has been driven by the monetary authority and the finance ministry paying back their loans contracted from international lenders (the IMF mainly) in 2009-2011. The central bank paid EUR 230mn to the IMF in June alone, while the government paid EUR 122mn the same month.
The gold stock remained unchanged at 103.7 tonnes and its value amounted to EUR 3,206mn.
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