PRAGUE, April 16 (Reuters) - The Polish zloty retreated
further on Thursday after hitting a three-month high this week,
while other central European currencies edged lower as investors
pulled back slightly from emerging assets.
In Romania, the leu <EURRON=> shed 0.8 percent on the back
of stop-losses to continue a pullback from its own three-month
high hit last week.
A global rise in equities and G20 pledges to bolster funds
available for hard-hit emerging countries has boosted appetite
for riskier assets, but data showing emerging giant China had
its slowest quarterly growth on record hit sentiment.
"Markets are still quite risk driven," said Lutz Karpowitz,
a senior currency strategist with Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
The zloty fell 1 percent from Wednesday's domestic close to
bid at 4.304 to the euro by 0740 GMT.
It had jumped at the start of the holiday-shortened week
after Poland said it would tap the International Monetary Fund's
new flexible credit line, while investors got more bullish on
the country's aims to enter the euro proving ground ERM-2 this
year.
Karpowitz said that, while the moves would add support for
the currency, the zloty firming was a bit overdone because no
actual IMF money was yet flowing into the country and euro hopes
were still far from a done deal.
"The appreciation has been a bit on thin ice," he said.
Polish central bank chief Slawomir Skrzypek said late on
Wednesday that ERM-2 entry was not a top priority.
[]
In other trade, Hungary's forint <EURHUF=> was 0.6 down to
bid at 292.25 per euro, and the Czech crown <EURCZK=> dipped to
26.875 to the euro.
The leu fell back to 4.22 per euro after touching its
highest since January at 4.11 last week.
"There has been a wave of stop losses deals involving both
locals and foreign players," said one dealer with a foreign bank
in Bucharest.
"Some of them have previously bet the leu would continue to
firm from a 4.1 per euro level hit earlier."
Romania followed EU members Latvia and Hungary last month in
tapping an IMF aid package to plug financing holes. Their
packages come with stricter fiscal conditions than the flexible
credit line set for fundamentally stronger countries.
Romania's government budget, revised last week to meet
demands of the IMF-led loan arrangement, takes into account an
average exchange rate of 4.3 lei per euro for this year against
4 set originally.
----------------------MARKET SNAPSHOT-------------------------
Currency Latest Previous Local Local
close currency currency
change change
today in 2009
Czech crown <EURCZK=> 26.875 26.815 -0.22% -0.45%
Polish zloty <EURPLN=> 4.304 4.261 -1.00% -4.39%
Hungarian forint <EURHUF=> 292.25 290.65 -0.55% -9.82%
Croatian kuna <EURHRK=> 7.386 7.372 -0.19% -0.28%
Romanian leu <EURRON=> 4.22 4.185 -0.83% -4.87%
Serbian dinar <EURRSD=> 93.01 93.27 +0.28% -3.8%
All data taken from Reuters at 0942 CET.
Currency percent change calculated from the daily domestic
close at 1600 GMT.
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(Reporting by Reuters bureaus, writing by Jason Hovet; Editing
by Toby Chopra)
