The Romanian currency RON has continued to depreciate on Monday, after the week-end announcement about the VAT increase and after having suffered a first round of depreciation last Friday, after the Constitutional Court ruled out the decrease of pensions.

The exchange rate reached RON 4.37 for EUR on the inter-banking market towards the end of the day, after foreign investors have bought euro.

The Romanian central bank published an exchange rate of RON 4.32 for an EUR on Monday, which means the local currency went down by 1.05 percent compared to Friday. The lowest average rate this year was in March, of RON 4.08 for an EUR. Yesterday's rate was the highest since the introduction of the RON/EUR rate. The second highest was of RON 4.31 on January 22nd 2009.

Individuals bought two times more euros than on a regular day from exchange offices, and in some cases the EUR acquisition was even five times than on an average day. The high volume of activity was mainly due to fears of an expected RON depreciation, which was fueled by comments coming from Romanian Central Bank representatives. Gold sales have also moved up, especially for gold coins.

Other currencies in the Central and Eastern European region took a nosedive too. The Polish zloty went down by 0.65 percent and the Hungarian forint, by 0.8 percent.