CEE Exchange Rate Report for August 17– August 28

By: The Quinnipiac University Economics Research Team, Michael Szwaja

Source: Eurostat and own calculations. Exchange rates are inverted to be EURO per local currency (i.e., an increase indicates a stronger domestic currency) and then indexed to be 100 at the start of the period.

All CEE currencies besides the Hungarian forint have seen a change of less than half a percent relative to the Euro over the past two weeks. The Polish zloty was the only currency that saw an appreciation, with a gain of approximately .15% against the Euro. The Czech koruna and Romanian leu both depreciated less than a quarter of a percent. Notably, the Hungarian forint saw the greatest change, with a steep decline of around 1.5%.

On August 24th, the forint experienced a significant drop, with the koruna and zloty following suit a day after. These three currencies saw an abrupt increase of approximately .15% towards the end of the time period, while the leu remained relatively constant across both weeks.

Source: Eurostat and own calculations. Exchange rates are inverted to be EURO per local currency (i.e., an increase indicates a stronger domestic currency). The center line is a rolling three-month average. The upper and lower boundaries are the average plus and average minus one standard deviation, respectively, for the same three-month period.

The Koruna and Zloty saw a marginal increase in their values and ended the period just above their historical upper bound. The Forint and Leu had the most significant declines. The Leu started nearly one standard deviation above its three-month average and the Forint started right above its rolling three-month average. Both of these currencies dropped with the Forint falling to more than one standard deviation below its average and the Leu dropping just under its rolling-mean within the first few days.

All currencies began the two week period close to their upper bounds. Both the Zloty and Koruna ended the second week above their respective bounds while the Forint and Leu had fallen significantly below theirs.