By KYIV. Nov 2 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The volume of purchases of foreign currency by the population of Ukraine in October exceeded the volume of its sale by $249.4 million compared to $170 million in September and $106.9 million in August, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has reported.
According to information on the NBU website, the net purchase in October was mainly in the cash market – $228.3 million: compared to September, the purchase decreased from $1.44 billion to $1.37 billion, while the sale fell from $1.29 billion to $1.14 billion.
According to these NBU data, the turnover on the official foreign exchange market in September is about two-thirds of the pre-war level, while in the first months of the war after the complete ban it was less than 5%.
At the end of September, the increase by the National Bank of the limit for the purchase of non-cash currency by individuals from UAH 50,000 to UAH 100,000 per month for its placement on deposit for at least three months was not reflected in the statistics. In October, the volume of purchases of non-cash currency amounted to $200 million compared to $200.2 million in September.
The volume of sales of non-cash currency by the population last month again slightly decreased – to $178.6 million from $179.9 million in September, and for the second month in a row since the beginning of the war, it became less than the volume of purchases.
The volume of transactions with non-cash currency in October amounted to about 40% of the pre-war level.
In general, since the beginning of this year, according to official statistics, the population has sold $131 million more in foreign currency than it bought, but $537 million more in cash was bought than sold.
In the cash market, the U.S. dollar exchange rate is currently about UAH 40.25-40.0/$1, while the official rate set by the National Bank since July 21 is UAH 36.5686/$1.
