The main index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB), BET, took a double-digit plunge during the first hour of trading on March 9, to end the day with a 7.5% loss compared to Friday’s closing.

BET dropped to 8,734 after it had surpassed the 10,000 threshold earlier this year.

The decline on March 9 was in line with the drops recorded by the indexes in Poland (WIG) and Hungary (BUX) and came amid panic on all international markets due to the coronavirus pandemic and the plunge in oil prices.

Among the blue chips in Bucharest, the worst hit was OMV Petrom (-13.9%), directly impacted by the deep plunge of the oil price, amid a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. OMV Petrom’s shares dropped by 25% during the first part of the day.

Aluminium producer Alro Slatina also lost 15.2% from the value of its shares, amid financial problems caused by high energy costs. Alro’s trade unions warned at the end of last week that, unless the government steps in to help the company by reimbursing part of its expenditures on green certificates, the aluminium smelter might be closed. Notably, the company’s management has not issued any release about potential talks with the authorities.

Conpet, specialised in the transportation of petroleum products, lost 10% of its capitalisation as well.

The shares in the energy, industry and even banking sectors saw severe declines while the least impacted among the large companies on the BVB were those in the services sector: MedLife health service provider (-3.2%) and Sphera restaurant chains operator (-4%).

As regards the currency, Romania’s leu (RON) reached a new historical low versus the euro on March 9, when the central bank announced an exchange rate of RON4.8184 to the euro. The previous record was RON4.8127 to the euro, on February 28. On the international forex market, the Romanian currency declined even more as the exchange rate reached RON4.84 the euro, before returning to RON4.806 to the euro.

However, the Romanian currency continued to gain ground versus the US dollar, from RON4.2534 to the dollar at the end of last week to RON4.2182 to USD on Monday.