NBU sells nearly $11 mln on Thurdsay to support hryvnia

The National Bank of Ukraine on Thursday, March 26, sold about $11 million on the interbank foreign exchange market to smooth out excessive rate fluctuations, unlike in the past weeks when the regulator sold $100-300 million daily.

In the last three days, however, the NBU had not been selling foreign currency, the regulator reported on its Facebook page.

"This is the first intervention to sell foreign currency in the last three days. In general, the market looks much calmer than during the outbreak of coronavirus in early March. Most of the deals today remained in the range of UAH 28.05-28.20 to the U.S. dollar," the report says.

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Ukraine's international reserves now amount to about $25 billion. Last year, the NBU bought from the market almost $8 billion, while from year-start, the regulator sold less than $1.5 billion.

"Therefore, we have a sufficient margin of safety and, if necessary, we will keep going for currency interventions in order to smooth out excessive rate fluctuations," the NBU emphasized.

As UNIAN reported earlier, an increased demand for foreign currency was being observed on the Ukrainian forex market over the past two weeks, which was caused by a deterioration in market sentiment due to the global spread of the coronavirus. By the end of last week, however, the rush started to decline, as Ukrainians sold more foreign currency than they bought.

The NBU said they would not impose restrictions on the Ukrainian foreign exchange market and would continue to smooth out excessive fluctuations through the sale of foreign exchange reserves.

The week before, the regulator spent $981.6 million to support the hryvnia, and last week it was over $1 billion.

In 2019, the National Bank replenished reserves through the purchase of $7.9 billion worth of foreign currency on the interbank foreign exchange market.