In brief

  • The National Bank of Romania is paying banks 0.91% a year on the required reserves they hold in lei and 0.22% a year on those held in euro, for the period from 24 September to 23 October 2026. This is the money every bank is required by law to leave immobilised in accounts at the central bank, a share of the deposits it has taken from customers. The two figures are set afresh every month, by a separate circular for lei and for euro.
  • On lei the rate has risen by 0.01 percentage points compared with the previous period, while on euro it has fallen by 0.02 points. For the period from 24 August to 23 September 2026 the rates had been 0.90% on lei and 0.24% on euro, according to data published by the National Bank of Romania. On lei, 0.91% is the highest level in the last fourteen application periods, that is since August 2025, and the same figure was also reached in March and in June 2026.
  • The acts concern banks only, not their customers, and they change no interest rate on the market. Nobody has to do anything, no application has to be filed and nothing has to be paid. The figures matter for another reason: they show how little banks earn on the money they keep blocked, because the rate is calculated starting from the average interest banks themselves pay on customers’ current accounts, not from the monetary policy rate, which has stood at 6.50% a year since August 2024.
Act: Circular of the National Bank of Romania no. 26/2026 on the interest rate paid on the minimum reserve requirements held in lei as from the application period 24 September-23 October 2026 and Circular of the National Bank of Romania no. 27/2026 on the interest rate paid on the minimum reserve requirements held in euro as from the application period 24 September-23 October 2026
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial), Part I, no. 869 of 16 October 2026, page 7
In force from: 16 October 2026, the date of publication, because neither of the two circulars provides for any other date

Two circulars adopted by the Board of the National Bank of Romania, signed on 9 October 2026 by its Chairman, Mugur Constantin Isărescu, and published in the Official Gazette of Romania of 16 October 2026 set how much the central bank pays commercial banks for the money the law requires them to keep unused: 0.91% a year on reserves in lei and 0.22% a year on those in euro, for the interval from 24 September to 23 October 2026. Each circular has a single article, and all the rest of the text is a list of the legal basis.

The mechanism behind these two figures is more interesting than the figures. Any bank in Romania that takes deposits is required to leave part of them in accounts opened at the National Bank of Romania, where it cannot use them for lending. The percentage is called the minimum reserve requirement ratio and currently stands at 8% for money taken in lei and 5% for money taken in foreign currency. The reserve is not a tax: the money stays the bank’s and it earns interest. But it earns very little, and circulars no. 26 and no. 27 of 2026 say exactly how little.

The reserve has a double role. On the one hand, it forces every bank to keep a liquidity buffer, so that it does not lend out everything it has taken in. On the other, it is an instrument of monetary policy: when the central bank raises the percentage, it takes money out of circulation without touching interest rates, and when it lowers it, it puts the money back. The interest paid on the reserve is the part that makes the system bearable for banks. Without it, the obligation to immobilise 8% of deposits would be a disguised tax.

The legal basis is set in Law no. 312/2004 on the Statute of the National Bank of Romania, whose Article 8(3) provides that the central bank pays interest on the minimum reserve requirements at least at the level of the average interest rate on sight deposits charged by credit institutions. „Depuneri la vedere”, sight deposits, means the accounts from which a customer can withdraw money at any time, that is first of all current accounts, where interest is close to zero. The law therefore imposes a floor, and the National Bank of Romania applies it to the letter: in practice, the rate paid on the reserve is precisely that average, calculated monthly.

What it changes in practice

The rate of 0.91% a year applies to the amounts in reserve accounts in lei, and the rate of 0.22% a year to the amounts in reserve accounts in euro, for the days between 24 September and 23 October 2026. It applies only to the reserve that is due. Under Article 9(3) of Regulation of the National Bank of Romania no. 5/2024 on the regime of minimum reserve requirements, amounts held above the required level earn nothing at all, so a prudent bank that leaves a surplus at the central bank receives nothing on it.

Who falls under the rule: banks that are Romanian legal persons, development banks and the Romanian branches of credit institutions from other European Union Member States or from third countries. Foreign branches of Romanian banks are not covered. The central houses of credit cooperatives hold the reserve for the whole cooperative network.

For customers, the direct effect is nil. No interest rate on deposits, loans or current accounts changes as a result of these two circulars. The indirect effect does exist, but it is diffuse and runs the other way: the less the central bank pays on the immobilised reserve, the larger the cost the bank has to cover out of the rest of its business, and that difference ends up, in the end, in the margin between deposit rates and lending rates.

Both circulars entered into force on 16 October 2026, the date of publication, because Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 on legislative drafting rules provides that acts issued by autonomous administrative authorities enter into force on the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, unless a later date is provided for in their text, and neither of them provides for one.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Compared with the previous application period, 24 August to 23 September 2026, the rate on lei has risen from 0.90% to 0.91% a year, while the rate on euro has fallen from 0.24% to 0.22% a year. The movements are 0.01 and 0.02 percentage points, in other words of the order of a hundredth of a percent. The movement is the result of an automatic calculation: the rate follows the average interest that banks themselves pay on current accounts, and that shifts slightly from one month to the next.

Across 2026 as a whole, the rate on lei has moved within a band of nine hundredths of a percent: 0.82% for the period that began on 24 January, 0.87% from 24 February, 0.91% from 24 March, 0.88% from 24 April, 0.90% from 24 May, 0.91% from 24 June, 0.90% from 24 July and from 24 August, and now 0.91% from 24 September. On euro, the band ran between 0.17% and 0.24%.

The comparison over a full year is more telling. For exactly the same period last year, 24 September to 23 October 2025, circulars no. 31 and no. 32 of 2025, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 961 of 17 October 2025, had set 0.83% on lei and 0.18% on euro. In a year, the rate on lei has risen by 0.08 percentage points and the rate on euro by 0.04 points.

What has not changed: the reserve ratios themselves. At its meeting of 8 July 2026, the Board of the National Bank of Romania kept the minimum reserve requirement ratios at 8% for liabilities in lei and 5% for those in foreign currency, together with the monetary policy rate at 6.50% a year, the lending facility at 7.50% and the deposit facility at 5.50%. The monetary policy rate has stood at 6.50% since August 2024, so for more than two years.

Nor has the currency regime changed. Until Regulation no. 5/2024, the central bank set separate rates for lei, euro and US dollars. Now, under Article 3 of the regulation, the reserve for liabilities in foreign currency is held in a single account in euro, and the cost and the risk of currency conversion stay with the bank. That is also why exactly two circulars appear every month, one per currency.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The figure is public and verifiable. Every rate reaches the Official Gazette of Romania, with the application period written into the title, so anyone can reconstruct the full series without asking anybody for anything.
  • The calculation starts from an observable quantity. Article 9(4) and (5) of Regulation no. 5/2024 require the weighted average of interest rates on sight deposits, on the balances of the working day before the period begins, with three decimals rounded to the second. No room is left for negotiation.
  • The reserve remains the bank’s property and it earns interest. Law no. 312/2004 imposes a floor through Article 8(3), and the central bank cannot go below it even in periods of tighter liquidity.
  • The monthly rhythm makes the system predictable. A bank knows that the rate is recalculated for every application period and can estimate its income from the reserve on the basis of its own current account rates, before it sees the circular.

What remains a problem

  • The rate is published after the period has begun and almost ended. The period began on 24 September 2026, and the circulars appeared on 16 October 2026, seven days before it closed, on 23 October.
  • The gap with any other placement remains wide. Money held as a reserve in lei earns 0.91% a year, while the central bank’s deposit facility was paying 5.50% a year, a difference of 4.59 percentage points on the same currency and with the same counterparty.
  • The real return is negative and the act does not show it. The annual inflation rate measured by the National Bank of Romania stood at 10.85% in May 2026, and the circulars place their figure in no context at all, so the reader has no way of knowing what 0.91% means.
  • Reserves held in excess earn nothing. A bank that leaves more at the central bank than it is required to, out of prudence, is not paid for the difference, under Article 9(3) of Regulation no. 5/2024.
  • The historical series is not to be found in one place. The figures are scattered across two circulars a month, and reconstructing a year of data means opening twenty-four separate acts.

Practical advice

  1. If all you want is the figure, read the single article. Everything above it, in both circulars, is the list of legal bases and holds no information about the rate.
  2. Do not confuse the two numbers with interest rates on the market. The rate paid on minimum reserve requirements is not the monetary policy rate, it is not the rate at which you borrow from a bank and it is not the rate you receive on a deposit. It is the price the central bank pays banks for an obligation imposed by law.
  3. When you compare two periods, use the application period from the title as your reference and treat the publication date as mere information. The period runs from the 24th of one month to the 23rd of the next, and the circular appears in the Official Gazette of Romania three or four weeks after the interval has begun.
  4. Look for the circulars in pairs. For every application period two acts appear with consecutive numbers, one for lei and one for euro, in the same issue of the Official Gazette of Romania. If you find only one, the other exists, with the neighbouring number.
  5. For foreign currency, search for „euro”, not for dollars. Since Regulation no. 5/2024, the reserve for all liabilities in foreign currency is held in euro, so there is no longer a circular for US dollars.
  6. If you want the complete series, start from Regulation no. 5/2024 on legislatie.just.ro: the circulars issued in application of Article 9 are listed there, with the number, the period and the issue of the Official Gazette of Romania in which they appeared.

Frequently asked questions

What are minimum reserve requirements?
They are amounts that every bank is required to hold in accounts at the National Bank of Romania, calculated as a percentage of the deposits and of the debt securities it has issued. The percentage is currently 8% for resources in lei and 5% for those in foreign currency. The money stays the bank’s, but it cannot be lent out, and the central bank pays interest on it.
Why does the central bank pay interest on this money?
The obligation to immobilise it comes from the law, and a bank cannot refuse it. If the reserve were not remunerated, the obligation would work as a tax on the deposits taken in. Article 8(3) of Law no. 312/2004 on the Statute of the National Bank of Romania imposes a floor: the interest paid cannot be lower than the average interest banks pay on sight deposits.
Why is the interest so low, 0.91%, when the monetary policy rate is 6.50%?
Because the two are not calculated in the same way and do not have the same role. The rate paid on the reserve follows, by law, the average interest on customers’ current accounts, which is close to zero, not the rate at which the central bank lends money to banks short term. The floor in the law is a minimum, and the central bank’s practice is to apply it exactly, not to pay more.
How is the figure of 0.91% arrived at?
The National Bank of Romania calculates monthly, separately for lei and for euro, the weighted average of the interest rates banks pay on sight deposits, on the balances of the last working day before the application period begins. The data are submitted within three working days of the start of the period. The average is calculated to three decimals and rounded to the second. The rule is in Article 9(4), (5) and (6) of Regulation of the National Bank of Romania no. 5/2024.
The period began on 24 September and the acts were published on 16 October. Do they apply retroactively?
Not in the legal sense of a rule that changes the past. The rate could not have been known before 24 September 2026, because it is calculated on the balances of the working day before that date, and banks submit the data after the period has begun. The interest is paid at the end of the period, so late publication overturns nothing already paid. In practice, though, banks work through almost the whole period without knowing the exact figure.
Does it affect me as an ordinary bank customer?
Directly, no. No interest rate in your contracts changes. You have nothing to file and nothing to pay. Indirectly, yes, but very diffusely: the more poorly the required reserve is remunerated, the more its cost weighs on the rest of the bank’s business and shows up in the difference between deposit rates and lending rates.
Why are there two separate circulars, one for lei and one for euro?
The separate calculation for the two currencies is required by Article 9(4) of Regulation no. 5/2024, and the averages come out differently: interest on current accounts in lei differs from interest on current accounts in euro. The result is one act per currency, with consecutive numbers and the same application period.
What happens if a bank does not hold the reserve?
Law no. 312/2004 provides, in Article 8(4), for penalty interest where the obligation is not met. Circulars no. 26 and no. 27 of 2026 do not deal with that; they only set the rate paid on a reserve that has been correctly held.

Editorial analysis

The two circulars are clean from a legal point of view. Each has a single article, a figure, a period and a legal basis that says exactly what is attributed to it: Article 8(3) of Law no. 312/2004 does impose the floor invoked, Article 9 of Regulation no. 5/2024 does describe the method of calculation, and Article 48 of the same law does allow the National Bank of Romania to regulate by circular. There is nothing to report as an error. The problem with these acts is not what they say but what is missing around them, and that absence is by design, not by accident.

The first observation that reading the acts does not yield is what the reserve actually costs. With a reserve ratio of 8% for liabilities in lei and remuneration of 0.91% a year, while the central bank’s deposit facility was paying 5.50% a year for money left at the same institution, every 100 lei of resources taken in lei brings a bank roughly 0.37 lei less a year than it would if the same 8 lei of reserve sat in the deposit facility. The difference of 4.59 percentage points, applied to the ratio of 8%, is the hidden cost of the instrument. It appears in no circular, because no circular has any duty to calculate it, yet it is precisely why the reserve ratio works as an instrument of monetary policy.

The second observation comes from putting two articles of the same regulation together. Under Article 6(2), a change in the minimum reserve requirement ratios, that is in the percentages of 8% and 5%, has to be announced by circular at least 10 days before the application period begins. Article 9(2), which deals with the interest paid, provides for no deadline at all. The result is an asymmetry visible in the dates of these two acts: the period began on 24 September 2026, and the figure reached the public on 16 October 2026, 22 days later and only seven days before the interval closed. The part the central bank imposes on banks comes with notice; the part the central bank owes banks does not. The asymmetry has a serious technical explanation, since the average of current account rates cannot be calculated before the period begins, but the explanation does not remove the effect: a bank cannot plan its income from the reserve with the same precision with which it plans its obligation.

The third observation comes from comparing the series. In 2026, the rate on lei oscillated between 0.82% and 0.91%, an amplitude of nine hundredths of a percent over nine consecutive periods, while the monetary policy rate stayed unmoved at 6.50% a year since August 2024. The two quantities differ in level and move at different rhythms, and the smaller one fluctuates more than the larger. That confirms that the rate paid on the reserve carries no signal of monetary policy: it is a consequence of banks’ commercial behaviour towards their own customers, reflected back at them.

What should be changed

  • An official page with the full series of rates, updated for every period. At present, seeing the trend over a year means opening twenty-four circulars in different issues of the Official Gazette of Romania. A single public table with the period, the rate on lei, the rate on euro and the number of the circular would make verifiable in thirty seconds a piece of information that now takes an hour.
  • A maximum publication deadline, written into the regulation. No deadline is provided for in Article 9(2), and practice has taken the figure to 22 days after the period began. A deadline of, say, 10 working days from receipt of the data from banks would align the central bank’s obligation with the 10 days’ notice that Article 6(2) requires when the reserve ratios change.
  • Publication of the average that produced the rate, not only of the result. The rate is the weighted average of interest rates on sight deposits, calculated to three decimals and rounded to two. Publishing the three decimals and the balances used for the weighting would let anyone redo the arithmetic, without changing anything about the confidentiality of individual banks’ data.
  • Merging the two circulars into a single monthly act. Lei and euro have the same application period, the same legal basis and the same text, apart from the currency and the figure. Two acts with consecutive numbers and an identical preamble double the volume published and make the series harder to follow, with no legal gain.
  • One line of context in every circular. A single sentence stating what the rate was in the previous period would turn an act that nobody can interpret today without an archive into an act that explains itself. The model already exists in other regulatory acts of the National Bank of Romania, which state the act they amend.
  • Clarification of the status of the US dollar in public reporting. Regulation no. 5/2024 moved the whole foreign currency reserve into an account in euro and, since then, only two circulars a month are issued. The central bank’s statistical tables, however, continue to show an interest rate column for dollars, identical from one period to the next, which no circular sets any more. An explanatory note would avoid confusion for anyone reading the series.

Original text of the legal act

The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.

The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania

Official Gazette of Romania no. 869 of 16 October 2026, page 7 8 pages PDF, 73 KB the act starts on page 7

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.