We attended the presentation of the new Inflation report delivered in Bucharest by Mr. Isarescu, NBRs governor. These are some key messages sent by the governor:-The governor denied rumors in the media about an upward revision of the 2013 inflation forecast of the NBR; the official forecast remains unchanged at 3.5% in December 2013, the upper limit of the target; the projection for December 2014 is 3.2%; inflation will enter the target in 3Q13 and will remain there over the entire forecast horizon-The NBR kept the EURRON within 4.3-4.6 interval by employing a managed floating FX regime; the variation interval would have been 4-5 in case of free floating FX regime; the costs for a rather stable RON were quite large fluctuations of money market rates-The volatility of the RON could increase in the future -The governor is concerned about weak economic growth,but the NBR will continue to pursue the stability of pricesand is not ready to cut rates aggressively -A resumption of economic growth based solely onhousehold consumption should be avoided, because C/Adeficit is still high at around 4% of GDP -Heavy bond issuance of the MinFin in January put pressure on money market rates.
Our view: The messages sent today by the NBR governor confirmed our forecasts. We foresee the EURRON at 4.35 in March and 4.40 in December 2013. 3M ROBOR will decline to 5.5% in December because the NBR will increase gradually the volume of liquidity provided to banks through repo auctions and eventually will remove the cap.We are less optimistic about inflation rate and estimate it at 4.1% y/y in December due to hikes in administered energy price and still high food price. The first step of the NBR could be a 25bp cut in the key rate in 1Q14, while RON minimum reserves could be cut later in 2014.
Source: bne