„If you don’t have enough state paper, like in our case, and you have foreign currency, then you control the liquidity by buying and selling foreign currency,” Isarescu told a banking seminar.
„Technically speaking, those who try to decipher the central bank’s operations and they link them only to the exchange rate are wrong, because this is not the only thing these operations are about,” he added.
On Tuesday, Isarescu said the central bank resorted to euro sales on the interbank market to manage liquidity over the past months, after having stashed up hard currency in the first quarter.
Additionally, the central bank’s chief dismissed media reports that the central bank injected EUR11 billion into the market over the past years and stressed the leu’s current exchange rate was not artificially created.
„There is no doubt in my mind that the (leu’s) exchange rate is almost an obsession for Romanians (…). At least the messages should be correct,” Isarescu told reporters.