Romanian currency reaches strongest rate against euro since Feb 2012 at prospect of inclusion on emerging market bond index

Romania's currency has gained to reach an 11 month high following the news that Romanian bonds are eligible for JPMorgan's emerging market government bond index. “Romania’s inclusion into the JPMorgan bond index will attract a lot of inflows from foreign investors which are currency positive,” said a senior emerging-market strategist at Societe Generale, Esther Law, quoted by Bloomberg. Romania's central bank (BNR) currently puts the exchange rate at RON 4.3894 to EUR 1, but according to Bloomberg the rate reached RON 4.3432 to EUR 1 at just after 7pm local time on January 15. This was the strongest the Romanian leu has been against the euro since February 2012. JPMorgan has judged that Romania qualifies for its GBI-EM Index Series and is scheduled for inclusion on March 1. “Romania’s weighting on completion is estimated at 0.54 percent in the GBI-EM Global Diversified index,” according to JPMorgan release quoted by Bloomberg. Read the Bloomberg article. editor@romania-insider.com