REUTERS
The central bank sells as much currency as the market needs.
Ukrainian businesses and individuals bought US$2.1 billion during five working days in March.
"If we take the period from the beginning of last week, that is, the start of the crisis, and until Monday [March 16], then the overall demand for the five working days amounted to US$2.1 billion, of which US$300 million was bought by individuals and a mere US$8 million was bought by nonresidents," Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Oleh Churiy said at a briefing on March 17.
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"Most of the currency was bought by Ukrainian companies for payments under import contracts and debt obligations," he added.
According to him, the negative balance of NBU interventions is slightly below US$1 billion, and the country's international reserves are at a sufficient level, totalling US$25 billion.
"We will continue our policy aimed at smoothing forex fluctuations, since stability on the forex market is very important," he said.
The central bank sells as much currency as the market needs, and all bids are met as trade closes, so there is no panic on the interbank market today, he said.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the NBU on March 16 sold US$238 million on the interbank forex market. Last week, the regulator spent US$981.6 million on the support of the Ukrainian hryvnia.
Ukraine's international reserves at the beginning of March amounted to US$26.6 billion, which was 5% up on the beginning of the year.
In 2019, the National Bank replenished the reserves, having bought US$7.9 billion.