Ukraine's international reserves shrink to $18.44 bln

Ukraine's international reserves as of February 1, 2018, amounted to $18.443 billion, which was 2%, or $365 million, less than as of January 1, 2018.

The reserves saw the decrease in January after the government had spent $565.6 million on repayment and servicing of foreign state and government-guaranteed debt, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has said.

Read alsoUkraine repays $375 mln to IMF under 2014 SBAThe regulator also launched interventions on the interbank market to reduce excess forex fluctuations, as a result of which it sold $15.9 million more than it bought.

In addition, the reserves shrank due to reassessment of financial tools, namely a change in their market value and forex rates (by $205.9 million) and other operations ($9.9 million).

The NBU says that the amount of the reserves as of February 1 covers 3.5-month future imports, which is sufficient for Ukraine to meet its current obligations and for the government and the National Bank of Ukraine to handle current operations.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine's international reserves as of January 1, 2018, had amounted to $18.808 billion, which was 21% up on January 1, 2017.

The NBU projects that the country's international reserves will expand to $20.5 billion as of the end of 2018.