Romanian Leu
Currency

Overview

Romania is situated at the Central and Southeastern Europe crossroads with Balkan Peninsula to the north and the Black Sea on the borders. Romania shares border with Serbia and Hungary towards the west, Bulgaria to the south and Republic of Moldova and Ukraine to the northeast. The Romanian Leu is the official currency of Romania and the ISO currency code is RON with 946 as the numeric code. The Romanian Leu is subdivided into 100 bani.

The singular term is ban and the currency name meant ‘lion’. Romania underwent on 1 July, 2005 a currency reform such that it switched from the earlier leu to new leu i.e. from ROL to RON where 1 RON = 10,000 ROL. The Moldova currency is also known as the leu, but is not dependent on the Romanian leu.

History

Romania adopted a bimetallic currency in 1867 such that the leu was = to 5gms of 83.5% silver or 0.29032 gms gold. In 1878 the Rusian ruble went high that the native coins became out of circulation.

The customs and taxes were paid in gold. Romania left in 1914 the gold standard and gradually the value of leu fell. In 1947, a new leu replaced the old leu without any advance notice and this was done to depose the upper and middle cases of their assets. At that time the new 150 lei was equal to 1 U.S$. In 1952, once again another third leu was introduced and in 2005, the fourth leu (RON) was revalued.

Romania and the euro

The Romanian government announced to join by 2015 the Eurozone. But, at present the Romanian Leu is not a part of ERM II, but has all plans to join by 2010-2012. The ECB president in June 2007 said Romania has to work over many things before joining ERM II. The Romanian new leu banknotes were issued as identical euro banknotes physical proportions, but the older leu notes were wider than the new banknotes.

The Romanian euro coins are yet to be designed and Romania is expected in 2014 to adopt the Euro.