CEE Exchange Rates Report for March 24th - 28th

By: Dan Hogan, The Quinnipiac University Economics Research Team

CEE Currencies Index

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 100 at the start of the period. 

During the week of March 24th – 28th, all select currencies saw slight boosts in the exchange rate against the USD. The Hungarian forint (green) saw the highest increase, with a nearly 1.5% gain on the USD throughout the week. The rest of the group saw their small gains diminish on Friday, as all three currencies, Czech koruna (red), Romanian leu (blue) and the Polish zloty (turquoise) all ended the week under .25% gain against the dollar. However, it is worth noting that a day previously, the same three currencies were all at least up .5% against the dollar for the week.

CEE Currencies Historical Trends

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. 

For the week of March 24th – March 28th the currencies of CEE remain well above their rolling 3-month average. Much like the Euro and Swiss franc, European currencies have gained significant value on the dollar since the beginning of March. While some of these initial gains have been lost, all four of these currencies remain much higher than their position just one-month previous. Most notably, the Polish zloty (PLN) is up over 8 percent throughout the three-month time frame.