By KYIV. Jan 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The volume of purchases of foreign currency by the population of Ukraine in December 2022 exceeded the volume of its sale by $463.7 million compared to $390.6 million in November, $373.3 million in October, $202.5 million in September, the National Bank of Ukraine reported.
According to the information on its website, the "net" purchase in December was formed almost equally in the cash and non-cash markets, while earlier it was formed mainly in the cash market.
At the end of September last year, 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 continued to stimulate such operations: in December, the volume of purchases of non-cash currency increased to $450.5 million from $362.2 million in November, $323.9 million in October, $200.2 million in September.
The volume of sales of non-cash currency by the population last month also increased slightly – to $220.2 million from $211.1 million in November, $178.6 million – in October, however, for the fourth month in a row since the beginning of the war, it has been less than the volume of purchases and the gap between them is growing.
As for cash currency, its purchase and sale increased almost equally and insignificantly compared to November: purchase – from $1.370 billion to $1.425 billion, while sale – from $1.130 billion to $1.191 billion.
In accordance with these NBU data, the turnover on the official cash foreign exchange market in December of this year, as in November, amounted to about 62% of the turnover in the same pre-war months of 2021, while in the first months of the war after a complete ban, it was less than 5%.
The volume of transactions with non-cash currency in December 2022 increased to 64% of the pre-war level compared to 56% in November.
In general, in 2022, according to official statistics, the population bought $880.1 million more currency than sold, including $1.010 billion more in cash was bought than sold.
In the cash market, the dollar exchange rate currently stands at about UAH 40.65/$1, while the official rate set by the National Bank since July 21 is UAH 36.5686/$1.
