By Iulian Ernst in Bucharest Romania’s monetary authority, the National Bank of Romania (BNR) is expected to hike the refinancing rate by 25bp to 7% in the last step of the monetary tightening cycle on January 10. However, as banks rarely rely on refinancing and even less on Lombard money, the policy rate’s effectiveness is seriously questioned. “We strongly favour a 25bp hike to 7.00% against a decision to keep the key rate unchanged. In any case, markets could be quite indifferent to the decision, as the context of ample liquidity significantly dilutes the relevance of the policy rate,” said…