Romanian leu in the context of "ISO 4217"

In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of the euro.

The exchange rate is also regarded as the value of one country's currency in relation to another currency. For example, an interbank exchange rate of 141 Japanese yen to the United States dollar means that ¥141 will be exchanged for US$1 or that US$1 will be exchanged for ¥141. In this case it is said that the price of a dollar in relation to yen is ¥141, or equivalently that the price of a yen in relation to dollars is $1/141.

The Treaty of Craiova (Bulgarian: Крайовска спогодба, romanized: Krayovska spogodba; Romanian: Tratatul de la Craiova) was signed on 7 September 1940 and ratified on 13 September 1940 by the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Romania. Under its terms, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja back to Bulgaria, which Romania had gained after the 1913 Second Balkan War. Bulgaria had to pay 1 million lei as compensation for the investment provided to the region by Romania.

The treaty stipulated that a population exchange between Bulgaria and Romania had to be made. Thus, 103,711 Romanians, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians living in Southern Dobruja were forced to move to Northern Dobruja (part of Romania), and 62,278 Bulgarians located in the north were forcibly moved to the south. The Dobrujan Germans, who were affected by these relocations, would eventually be transferred to Nazi Germany.

The Great Depression (Romanian: Marea Criză Economică or, rarely, Marea Depresie) of 1929–1933, which affected the whole world, had several consequences in the Kingdom of Romania. Romania had been among the winner countries of World War I. It received several new territories (Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania), with many natural resources. However, the war caused heavy human and economic losses to the country. Romania had to fight inflation and the non-convertibility of its currency, the Romanian leu (lei in plural). Romania then had a fundamentally agrarian economy, with agriculture accounting for 63.2% of the national production. The Great Depression affected Romania in several ways. For example, in 1933, the net national income was of 172,614,000,000 lei, only 62% of that of 1929, which was of 275,180,000,000 lei. To fight the economic crisis, the National Bank of Romania carried out various measures and the country took various loans. Help was also called upon from France.

The Great Depression led to a drop of 50% in industrial production and an increase of 300,000 persons in unemployment in Romania. By the early 1930s, the price of a quintal of wheat had fallen below the cost of harvesting it; agricultural goods, unprotected by any customs measures, were left to the discretion of international competition, which contributed to the decrease of their prices by 60–70% compared to those of 1928 and 1929. Landowners went bankrupt and the peasants had little left to eat or pay taxes to the state. By 1932, some 2.5 million farmers had unpaid debts to banks, worth 52 billion lei.